He sat opposite me.
“She wanted you to listen to that alone.”
“She didn’t say.”
I looked at the envelope.
“Then how do you know?”
“Because she asked me to repeat her exact words.”
He consulted a note.
“‘Listen alone. And don’t trust anyone who asks what’s on it.'”
I stared at him.
“Yes.” He folded the note and placed it back in the file.
“Did she tell you what she’d recorded?”
“No. She only asked me to make sure you received it.”
I turned the envelope over.
He looked down at the file.
“She made that decision herself, Shannon. I can’t tell you what she was thinking.”
Outside, my cousins were standing near their cars, discussing which jewelry pieces needed cleaning.
I walked past them.
One called my name.
I pretended not to hear.
Grandma and I had been close for as long as I could remember.
When I was little, I spent entire weekends at her apartment.
She kept a spare cardigan in the guest room because I always got cold after helping in her garden.
We baked on Saturdays.
Planted flowers every spring.
Went to church on Sundays.
As I grew older, the routines changed, but the visits didn’t stop.
Sometimes I joined her and her friends for bingo.
Sometimes we walked through the park.
Sometimes we sat in her kitchen reading separate books and saying almost nothing.
My cousins visited on holidays.
They weren’t cruel people.
They had jobs, children, and commitments.
They simply weren’t there as often.
Then Grandma became ill.
During her final hospital stay, I visited before work to read the newspaper.
In the evenings, I brought whichever novel we’d been reading together.
Near the end, she couldn’t follow much of the story.
Once, I reached the bottom of a page and realized she’d fallen asleep.
I kept reading anyway.
Now, driving home from the lawyer’s office, I couldn’t stop thinking about the cassette.
Not because I wanted money.
I would have liked something of hers that I could use.
Something that didn’t require finding a machine from the last century.
At home, I put the envelope on the kitchen table.
Then I called my mother.
She asked how the meeting had gone.
I told her.
“A cassette?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“Well, Penny was never predictable.”
“Did you know?”
“Mom, why would she do that?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
I heard dishes being moved in the background.
“Are you upset?”
“That’s understandable.”
I appreciated that she didn’t tell me the tape must be priceless in some sentimental way.
She simply let me be disappointed.
After we hung up, I opened the hall closet.
When we’d sorted Grandma’s belongings, I’d asked to keep her old cassette player.
Nobody else wanted it.
I’d taken it because I remembered her playing music while she baked.
It was still in the grocery bag I’d carried home.
I set it on the table, found the power cord, and plugged it in.
The cassette had SIDE A written in faint blue ink.
I pushed it into the player.
Pressed PLAY.
For a moment, there was only a low whir.
Then a child’s voice shouted:
“I planted a flower!”
I sat very still.
It was me.
Not the voice I heard when I spoke now.
A little girl’s voice, high and impatient.
Grandma laughed.
“What kind of flower, Shannon?”
“The purple kind.”
“That narrows it down.”
“The one with the purple.”
“Oh, that one.”
I laughed aloud.
I’d been about six.
I could picture the garden behind Grandma’s apartment.
The old metal watering can.
The soil that got stuck beneath my fingernails.
On the tape, Grandma asked whether I’d remembered to water my flower.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
A pause.
“All the water.”
Grandma made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cough.
Then she laughed again.
“Oh, Shannon.”
The recording ended.
I sat listening to the empty tape for another few seconds.
Then I rewound it.
I wanted to hear her laugh again.
I played the whole thing twice.
On the third listen, I noticed something.
Grandma hadn’t corrected me.
She’d asked another question.
And another.
I’d answered every one.
I turned the cassette over.
SIDE B.
There was a longer pause before Grandma spoke.
Her voice was older.
A little rougher.
“Shannon, sweetheart. I hope that made you laugh.”
I covered my mouth.
“I’ve had that recording for years. Your grandfather made it when you were little. He thought it was funny that you could talk about one flower for twenty minutes.”
A chair creaked.
“I never could remember what those purple flowers were called.”
She paused.
I leaned closer.
“When you were six, I heard you talking to your mother one afternoon. You said you thought people liked you better when you were quiet.”
I frowned.
I didn’t remember saying that.
Grandma continued.
“I don’t think you meant anything terrible by it. Children say all sorts of things. But I remember wondering why you thought you had to make yourself smaller for people.”
A little rustling came through the speaker.
“So the next weekend, I asked you to help me plant flowers.”
I looked toward the window.
“You talked the entire afternoon. You told me about your teacher, your shoes, a bird you’d seen, and those purple flowers.”
She chuckled.
“I don’t believe I finished a single sentence.”
I could see her now.
Kneeling beside the garden bed.
Letting me pour too much water.
Listening.
“You always thought you came to keep me company,” she said.
I reached toward the player.
“That wasn’t how it started, dear.”
The tape hissed softly.
“I liked having somebody who wanted to talk to me. And I liked that you didn’t seem worried about saying the wrong thing.”
I sat back.
For years, I’d remembered those weekends as something I did for Grandma.
I hadn’t considered that she’d invited me because she thought I needed somewhere to talk.
Then her voice changed.
“Now, I need to tell you about something I got wrong.”
I stopped the tape.
I didn’t mean to.
My finger simply landed on the button.
The sudden silence was awful.
Grandma had apologized to me before.
For burning cookies.
For forgetting to save the newspaper crossword.
Once, for giving my birthday card to the wrong granddaughter.
But this sounded different.
I pressed PLAY again.
“As you grew older, I got used to you coming around. I loved it, Shannon. I truly did.”
She cleared her throat.
“After your grandfather died, there were days when the apartment felt terribly quiet. Sometimes I’d mention that when you called.”
I remembered her saying things like:
It’s so quiet here today.
I haven’t had anybody to talk to all morning.
I’d usually offered to visit.
She continued.
“I didn’t always think about what those words might make you feel you had to do.”
I stared at the player.
“You were nineteen when your friends invited you away for a weekend. Do you remember that?”
I did.
A cabin by a lake.
Four friends.
Two nights away.
I’d been excited until Grandma called to ask whether I was coming for Sunday lunch.
I’d told my friends I couldn’t go.
I’d said I had family plans.
“You told me you’d rather come over. I believed you.”
I looked down.
“I found out later you’d wanted to take that trip.”
The cassette clicked faintly.
“I heard you telling your mother you hadn’t wanted to disappoint me.”
I remembered my mother telling me I was allowed to go.
I remembered insisting it was fine.
I remembered spending that Sunday at Grandma’s apartment, laughing over a terrible bingo story.
It hadn’t been an unhappy afternoon.
That was what made the memory difficult.
“I was so proud that you loved me,” Grandma said. “I was ashamed that I’d let you believe loving me meant never disappointing me.”
I pressed my fingertips against the edge of the table.
Grandma had never mentioned the cabin trip.
Not once.
“I tried to do better after that. You may remember I started making more plans with Mabel and the others.”
Sometimes I’d call and Grandma would tell me she couldn’t see me on Sunday.
Come Tuesday. I’ve got bingo.
I’d occasionally been offended.
Not seriously.
Just enough to wonder whether she’d grown tired of me.
“I enjoyed those afternoons,” Grandma said. “And I enjoyed knowing you had things to do without me.”
“Although I still think that one fellow you dated was a complete waste of a perfectly good Saturday.”
I laughed.
“Grandma.”
She’d hated that boyfriend.
Apparently death hadn’t improved her opinion.
Then she said, “There’s another recording I want you to hear.”
I looked at the cassette.
“It’s an old message you left on my answering machine. I used to play it back while I had this recorder running. I didn’t know I’d caught my own voice afterward until I listened.”
A click.
The sound changed.
My own adult voice came through, thin and distant.
“Hi, Grandma! I can’t come Sunday. I’ve got something planned. But I’ll see you Tuesday, okay? Love you!”
I waited.
Then I heard Grandma.
Not speaking to me.
Speaking in the room after she’d listened to the message.
A small, surprised laugh.
“Well, look at that. My girl has somewhere she wants to be.”
“Good for her.”
I bent over the table.
I couldn’t even remember what I’d been doing that Sunday.
The tape clicked softly before her voice returned.
“I liked our Sundays, sweetheart.”
“I liked the Tuesdays too.”
Then the tape clicked off.
I didn’t move.
Eventually, I reached for the envelope.
There was no hidden note inside.
No second gift.
Just my name written in Grandma’s familiar handwriting.
I wished she’d left me her pearl necklace.
I wished she’d told me all this while we could still sit together in her kitchen.
And I wanted to hear that little laugh again.
I rewound the tape.
Before I could press PLAY, my phone rang.
It was the cousin who’d laughed at the lawyer’s office.
“Shannon? Did you listen to it?”
I looked at the cassette player.
“What was on it?”
I thought of Grandma’s warning.
Don’t trust anyone who asks what’s on it.
“It’s Grandma talking.”
“Us.”
My cousin went quiet.
Then she asked, “Did she say anything about the jewelry?”
I rested my hand on the cassette.
And suddenly I understood why Grandma had wanted me to hear it alone.
“No,” I told my cousin.
“Could I hear it? Just to be sure?”
I ended the call.
The following Tuesday, I returned a borrowed book to Grandma’s bingo friend, Mabel.
“She talked about you constantly,” Mabel said.
“I worried she was lonely.”
“Sometimes. But she didn’t spend her days waiting for you, sweetheart.”
“Really?”
Mabel chuckled.
“Once she brought the wrong glasses to bingo and insisted every card was printed incorrectly.”
I could almost hear Grandma arguing with the caller.
That evening, a friend invited me away for the weekend.
Sunday included.
I started typing an excuse.
Then I remembered Grandma laughing at my answering-machine message.
I deleted the excuse and typed:
“I’d love to come.”
Before leaving, I asked Mom whether I could take a cutting from Grandma’s garden.
She helped me choose one of the purple flowers.
When I returned Sunday evening, the little plant was waiting on my windowsill.
Its soil was dry.
I watered it.
My phone lit up with another invitation for next Sunday.
I glanced at the cassette player on the shelf.
Then I texted:
“Count me in.”
I moved the plant closer to the sunlight and left the tape where it was.
