Silence.
“Which Eleanor?”
I told her.
Something clattered.
“Grandma?”
“I’m here.”
“She died last month.”
Another silence.
Then, quietly, “Oh, Ellie.”
I’d never heard her sound like that.
I explained that Eleanor was once under my care.
I couldn’t tell her about my feelings.
I visited the following morning.
Grandma took one look at the photograph and started crying.
“We were inseparable,” she said. “She used to climb through my bedroom window carrying books.”
“What happened?”
She looked down.
“Your grandfather and I had a difficult marriage in the beginning. I was young and frightened. I told Eleanor I was thinking about leaving him.”
“And?”
“She told him.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“She thought she was helping. She told him I needed reassurance, that he should convince me to stay.”
Grandma shook her head.
“He came home furious. Accused me of telling everyone our private business. For weeks, every argument became another fight about what I’d told Eleanor.”
“Did you leave him?”
“No. We eventually worked through our problems. But I couldn’t trust Eleanor anymore.”
“Did she apologize?”
“She tried. I told her never to contact me again.”
“And she didn’t?”
“No.”
“She believed you hated her.”
Grandma sighed.
“For years, I did.”
“Do you still?”
She looked surprised.
“Of course not.”
“Then why didn’t you tell her?”
Grandma stared at the photograph.
“Life happened. Children, work, your grandfather getting sick. Eventually I wasn’t angry anymore. But after so many years, I didn’t know how to reach out.”
“She was afraid you’d reject her.”
Grandma wiped her eyes.
“Then she should have asked.”
I showed her the part about our family’s hardship.
She read it slowly.
“She knew?” she whispered.
I nodded.
“Would you have accepted her help?”
“When your father lost his job? James, I would have accepted help from anyone.”
She folded the letter.
Then she said something I hadn’t expected.
“I forgave Eleanor more than 20 years ago.”
I stared at her.
“Twenty years?”
“At least.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“Because I was afraid she wouldn’t want to hear from me.”
We sat in silence.
Two women who’d loved each other like sisters had spent decades afraid to make the same phone call.
And now one of them was dead.
I brought the books to Grandma’s house the next afternoon.
She stood beside the boxes, recognizing titles she’d last seen as a teenager.
Then she found a small blue hardcover.
Its spine had been repaired with brown tape.
“Oh, my goodness.”
She opened it.
Inside the cover, in faded ink, it said: “To Ellie, because you always steal my books anyway. Love, Maggie.”
Grandma laughed through her tears.
“I gave her this for her 16th birthday.”
“She kept it all these years.”
“She kept everything.”
We spent hours reading their notes in the margins.
They’d argued about characters, corrected each other’s spelling, and written little jokes only they understood.
Eleanor hadn’t just left me expensive books.