My mother’s desk had been in the family for generations. She always said that as a little girl, she asked her mother if she could have it one day and her mother slapped her. I believed it, seeing the anger of my grandmother. The desk sat in our living room, perched right below a large window. The surface was always clean, with only some papers and pens. Anybody writing could look out and see the street, perhaps for some inspiration. My mother sat there often throughout her life, but I never knew what she was writing.

Now that she was dead, I wiped the dust from the top and watched it float to the floor. I opened the drawer and saw an envelope, neatly folded, with my name in a pretty font - that wasn’t my mother’s handwriting.

I thought of the will, the reading and the signing. My head had been clouded in grief, but I saw it clearly now: that hadn’t been my mother’s handwriting either …