When I was six, I’d walk my grandmother to her room. She always held my hand and complimented me—but later I realized she was memorizing me: every freckle, every smile, even how I dragged my feet.
She’d say, “There’s gold behind your eyes.” I thought it was just a grandma thing.
By ten, she began forgetting small things—her purse, names, whether she fed the cat. Then she put the kettle in the freezer and asked if I was her sister. That’s when she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She moved in with us, and I gave up my room to sleep on a mattress in my brother’s.
I read to her often; she’d listen, eyes closed. One evening she squeezed my hand and whispered, “Don’t let them throw it away.” When I asked later, she didn’t remember.
By sixteen, she barely spoke, but I still read to her. When she died, the house felt cold without her.
While clearing her room, we found a tiny notebook labeled “For Zaina, when she’s ready”—filled with little letters she’d written to me over the years. They were full of love, wisdom, and reassurance. The last pages hinted at “something in the old mirror upstairs… something I couldn’t throw away.”
Behind that mirror was an envelope with my name and a key, and a note: “It’s in the garden, beneath the one rosebush that never dies.” I dug there and found a tin box with an old photo of my grandfather, a letter, and a velvet pouch with a locket dated 1974.