I knelt in front of the iron strongbox.
The combination lock. Four little wheels. Brass. Numbers zero through nine.
My birthday.
October seventeenth.
1-0-1-7.
I turned the wheels.
One.
Zero.
One.
Seven.
The lid came up.
Inside, on top, was a manila envelope.
Thick. Sealed. With a typed label.
WHITFIELD FAMILY TRUST — TRUST INSTRUMENT, DEED, AND BENEFICIARY DOCUMENTS — BENEFICIARY: WREN LAUREL MADDOX — DO NOT OPEN BEFORE BENEFICIARY’S 19TH BIRTHDAY.
My birthday was three months ago.
I’d turned nineteen in October.
Under the envelope was something else.
A Walkman.
A Sony Walkman. Yellow. The waterproof kind. Old. From the nineties.
With a pair of headphones. Foam earpieces. Orange.
And a pack of batteries. Double A. Still sealed.
And a cassette tape.
On the label, in my mother’s handwriting:
FOR WREN — WHEN YOU FIND THIS
My father had taken her tapes. Mom’s Road Songs. Wren’s Bedtime. Sunday Morning. In the shoebox. In the trunk.
He hadn’t known about this one.
I put the batteries in the Walkman.
My fingers were so cold I dropped two of them. They rolled across the stone floor. Dutch chased them.
I put the tape in.
I put on the headphones.
I pressed play.
Hiss.
Static.
Then a click.
Then breathing.
Then a voice.
“Hi, baby.”
I stopped breathing.
“It’s Mom. I’m in the cabin. Right now. Up on the ridge. Harlan drove me up. I made him. The doctor said I shouldn’t but I don’t care.”
A cough. Weak.
“It’s September. The aspens are turning. The whole ridge is gold. I wish you could see it. You’re at school right now. Third grade. Mrs. Lowry’s class. You’re probably learning long division and hating it.”
A laugh.
“I’m sitting on the porch. In Grandma Hazel’s rocking chair. There’s a plum tree right in front of me. It’s loaded. Purple. I’m going to make jam this afternoon. One more batch. One last time.”
A pause.
“I’m making you a jar, Wren.”
I was sitting on the cold stone floor of a root cellar with a forty-pound bag of dog food and a dog with a bad leg.
Listening to my dead mother’s voice.
Ten years old.
From September before she died.
“I don’t know when you’ll hear this,” she said. “Maybe never. I hope never. I hope your dad steps up. I hope you grow up in a warm house with people who love you and you never have to come up here.”
“But if you do,” she said. “If you’re up here alone. If you’re scared.”
Her voice got very soft.
“I want you to hear something.”
Then she started to sing.
Not well. She never sang well. Her voice was shaky from the chemo. She ran out of breath halfway through every line.
It was the song she sang me every night.
The one she made up when I was a baby.
“Little Wren, little Wren,
fly away and come back again,
when the snow is on the ridge,
I’ll be waiting by the bridge,
little Wren, little Wren,
fly away and come back again.”
She sang it three times.
Then she stopped.
“There’s a bridge,” she said. “Down by the creek. Behind the cabin. A little wooden one. Grandma Hazel built it. That’s the bridge in the song. I never told you that.”
A long breath.
“Go stand on it, baby. In the spring. When the snow melts. And sing it. Loud.”
Another cough. Worse.
“I’ll hear you.”
Click.
Hiss.
The tape ran out.
