Chapter 1 - The Hand Over Her Mouth.
I heard Lily before I saw her.
It was not a scream.
It was the kind of trapped, muffled sound a child makes when she is trying to call for someone and cannot get enough air around the hand covering her mouth.
I had just come through the front door with a paper grocery bag tucked against my hip when the sound carried down the hallway from the study.
For half a second, I told myself I had imagined it.
Then I heard the scrape of a shoe against the floor and my mother's voice, low and sharp.
“You saw nothing, Lily.”
The grocery bag hit the entry table.
I was moving before the oranges inside finished rolling across the floor.
The study door was almost closed.
I shoved it open hard enough for the brass knob to strike the wall.
My six-year-old daughter was on the cream rug beside the desk.
My mother, Marlene, was kneeling over her with one knee planted beside Lily's hip and one hand clamped over Lily's mouth.
Lily's eyes were enormous.
Her cheeks were wet.
There was a red mark along her forearm where someone had been gripping her.
For one stunned second, the room seemed perfectly silent.
Then every sound arrived at once.
Lily's frightened breathing.
My mother's startled gasp.
The ticking wall clock above the bookcase.
My own pulse pounding in my ears.
I crossed the room and tore my mother's hand away from Lily.
“Get off her.”
Marlene stumbled sideways and caught herself against the desk.
Lily scrambled behind me so quickly that her shoulder struck the wall.
I crouched without taking my eyes off my mother and reached one hand backward until Lily grabbed it.
Her fingers were ice cold.
“What were you doing to her?” I asked.
Marlene's face was white at first.
Then, with a speed that scared me almost as much as what I had just seen, the panic disappeared.
She straightened her pale blue blouse.
She smoothed one sleeve.
She lifted her chin.
“She was having one of her episodes.”
I stared at her.
“What episode?”
“You know how dramatic she gets.”
Behind me, Lily made a small sound.
Marlene looked past my shoulder toward her.
“She works herself up, Ryan.”
My name sounded wrong in her mouth.
It sounded rehearsed.
“She was yelling and kicking, and I was trying to calm her.”
“You were covering her mouth.”
“She wouldn't stop.”
“You had her pinned to the floor.”
“I was keeping her from hurting herself.”
Lily's fingers tightened around mine.
My mother had spent my entire childhood converting facts into softer words.
When she insulted someone, she called it honesty.
When she controlled someone, she called it concern.
When she wanted something, she called it responsibility.
But I had never seen her do anything like this.
Not to Lily.
Never to Lily.
I turned slightly.
My daughter pressed herself against my back.
“Sweetheart, look at me.”
She shook her head.
“You're safe.”
Her eyes finally lifted.
“What happened?”
Marlene exhaled loudly.
“Ryan, don't feed this.”
I looked over my shoulder.
“Be quiet.”
It was the first time in my adult life I had ever said those words to my mother.
They landed harder than shouting would have.
She froze.
Lily swallowed.
Then her eyes shifted away from me.
She was not looking at Marlene.
She was looking at the white office chair beside the desk.
A large black leather purse hung from the back.
It belonged to my mother.
I knew it because I had bought it for her birthday the year before.
Marlene saw Lily looking at it.
The reaction was tiny.
A twitch beneath one eye.
A sudden tightening around her mouth.
Then she moved.
She took one quick step toward the chair.
I stood up immediately.
“Don't.”
She stopped.
“Don't what?”
“Go near the bag.”
Her face changed again.
Now she looked offended.
“This is ridiculous.”
Lily tugged my hand.
“Dad.”
Her voice was barely there.
I turned.
She was shaking so hard that her teeth clicked once when she tried to speak.
“Dad, check her purse.”
Marlene laughed.
It was short and artificial.
“For heaven's sake.”
I kept my eyes on Lily.
“Why?”
She looked at my mother and then at me.
“She took something.”
“What did she take?”
Marlene stepped toward us.
“That is enough.”
I put my palm out.
“Stay where you are.”
Her face hardened.
“Ryan.”
I reached for the purse.
Marlene lunged.
She actually lunged for it.
Her fingers caught the strap at the same time mine did.
The bag swung between us.
“What is wrong with you?” she hissed.
“What is in this bag?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
That sentence made the room colder.
I pulled the purse free.
Marlene stared at me as if I had crossed an unforgivable line.
I set it on the desk.
The zipper sounded painfully loud when I opened it.
At first I saw ordinary things.
A wallet.
A small makeup case.
A ring of keys.
A folded pharmacy receipt.
Then my fingers touched stiff paper beneath a scarf.
I pulled out a cream envelope.
My heart stopped.
I knew the handwriting before I read the name.
Ryan.
One word, written across the front in the narrow, slanted handwriting I had not seen in two years.
Emily's handwriting.
My wife's handwriting.
My dead wife's handwriting.
I stared at it until the letters blurred.
Emily had died in a highway accident twenty-six months earlier.
In the weeks after her death, I had searched our house for anything she might have left behind.
Notes.
Letters.
A final grocery list.
Anything that still carried the shape of her hand.
I had never seen this envelope.
My mother had.
It was in her purse.
I looked up slowly.
Marlene's confidence was gone.
“Where did you get this?”
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
I reached back into the purse.
My fingers closed around a small red flash drive attached to a silver key.
Lily flinched when she saw it.
“That,” she whispered.
Marlene's eyes snapped toward her.
“Lily.”
My daughter hid behind me again.
I held the flash drive up.
“What is this?”
“It isn't yours.”
“It was in my house.”
“You don't know what you're talking about.”
I examined the silver key.
A number had been engraved into the metal.
314.
Something about it felt familiar.
Then I remembered the small lockbox Emily had kept in the bottom drawer of the study desk.
I had not opened it since her death.
I turned toward the desk.
The bottom drawer was slightly open.
My skin went cold.
I crossed the room and pulled it out.
The lockbox sat inside.
Its lid was open.
Empty.
Marlene said my name carefully.
“Ryan, listen to me.”
I looked inside the purse again.
Beneath the envelope was a plastic card with Lily's full name embossed across the front.
It was a bank card.
I had never opened a bank account in Lily's name.
A second folded document was tucked under it.
I pulled that out too.
The first line read: Petition for Temporary Guardianship.
The petitioner listed beneath it was Marlene Mercer.
The child named in the document was Lily Mercer.
I stopped breathing.
Lily did not understand what the paper meant.
My mother did.
So did I.
I looked at the envelope from Emily.
I looked at the flash drive.
I looked at the bank card carrying my daughter's name.
Then I looked at the woman who had raised me.
“Why is all of this in your bag?”
Marlene's gaze drifted toward the open doorway.
For the first time since I was a boy, I saw my mother calculate whether she could run from me.
Then the doorbell rang.
Once.
Twice.
Three times in rapid succession.
Marlene's face changed.
She knew who was outside.
I did not.
May you like
And when she smiled at me, I understood that whatever I had found in the purse was only the beginning.
THE BLACK PURSE
