conclusion had taken days. She had rejected, then rejected again, the possibility that somebody, possibly even her mother, was playing cat and mouse. But the articles and the bracelet had appeared together, one as discordant as the other. And a more careful look at the bracelet had confirmed that it wasn’t a new one. Two charms were dated. One, an open Bible, had 6-15-59 inscribed on the back. Another, a heart—the only silver charm on a gold bracelet—said Forget Me Not on the front and 5-17-63 on the back.
Georgia had been born in 1965—on today’s date.
Staring at the bracelet after a grueling, mysterious week, she looked up from her desk when voices began a familiar song.
She smiled at her daughter and granddaughter, who were singing from the doorway.
“Happy birthday to you...”
Neither Edna nor Samantha was a talented musician, but the sentiment was welcome. She rose and held out her arms, and Edna got there first.
“Happy birthday, Grandma!”
“Now it is,” Georgia said, giving her granddaughter a warm hug.
“You didn’t think we forgot, did you?” Samantha asked. “We have such plans.”
The day hadn’t gone uncelebrated. At noon the office staff had brought in a cake, along with silly cards and a bouquet of tulips that were happily shedding petals on her desk now. But with the advent of Samantha and Edna, the big event seemed real.
“Next year I go into mourning,” Georgia said, embracing her daughter, too. “So let’s celebrate the heck out of this one.”
“Fifty is nifty,” Samantha said, “but I think you ought to end your forties in style. I’m making your favorite dinner.”
“How do you know I don’t have plans?”
“I’m sneaky. I asked Marianne to peek at your appointment calendar.”
“That was sneaky. You could have asked.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to feel obligated, in case something or someone better came along.”
She knew Samantha was referring to Lucas Ramsey, who Georgia had unwisely mentioned, and who hadn’t called or dropped by since their pizza dinner. She had hoped to talk to him about an idea she had proposed that morning to Dawson, a school literary magazine, but when she hadn’t heard from Lucas, she’d forged ahead without his input.
With some disappointment.
She ignored Samantha’s hint and moved on. “Let me get my things, then I’m out of here.”
“Hard week?”
Georgia hesitated. “An interesting week. I’ll tell you about it over some of your fabulous tea.”
“Do you want to go home and change, or can you follow us back?”
Georgia opted for the latter, and twenty minutes later she was parking in the circular driveway that took up the front yard of her daughter’s brick bungalow. The house was the smallest on the block, as if it had been squeezed in by taking slivers of the yards surrounding it. There was no place back or front for Edna to hang out with her friends, but there was a playground not too far away as a substitute. The neighborhood was safe and quiet, and the rent was cheap, virtues that had kept Samantha from looking for something larger.
Samantha and Edna emerged from their bright yellow VW, and the three women went inside together. Georgia laughed when she saw that the tiny living room had been festively adorned with streams of red-and-blue crepe paper and clusters of balloons.
“You went to so much work!” She hugged Edna again, sure this had been her granddaughter’s idea.
“I love birthdays.”
“And people will love you for making them special.”
“Take off your jacket,” Samantha said. “And I’ll make tea. Edna made some goodies to have with it.”
Georgia settled herself on Samantha’s comfortable couch. Her daughter had surprising talent as a seamstress, and she had made wonderful slipcovers and cushions to hide and dress up the unfortunate orange upholstery that had made the couch affordable. The slipcovers were a tweedy camel, and the cushions were rainbow-hued in different patterns and sizes.
Georgia had no idea where her daughter’s talent had come from. She herself had trouble threading a needle, and not because she couldn’t see. Samantha’s father had been an adoptee, so his birth family’s special abilities were a mystery.
Now she wondered if someone in her own family, some distant blood relative, had unknowingly passed on her talent with a sewing needle to Samantha. And, of course, that brought the charm bracelet to mind. Because one of the charms was a sewing machine.
Samantha brought in two glasses of iced herbal tea sweetened with honey and fragrant with lemon. Edna, who loved to cook, came out to serve something she called “devils on horseback,” which were dates wrapped in bacon, broiled and served on toothpicks. Along with them she’d made a cheese ball, which she served with crackers. Edna looked for recipes online the way most girls her age searched for news of their favorite boy band.
“I am impressed,” Georgia said. “This is amazing.”
Happy with the praise, Edna went back into the kitchen to work on something else she was creating for dinner, while her mother and grandmother enjoyed the first course.
“I made the main dish, but she wanted to do everything else,” Samantha said. “This week she’s talking about becoming a chef.”
Georgia thought of Lucas. “She can be anything she wants. Personally I’m voting for a brain surgeon who gives fabulous dinner parties for relaxation.”
“Sometimes I don’t know where that girl comes from.”
Georgia knew better than to point out that Samantha was the only one who did. Edna’s father was a mystery she never discussed. But the statement was a great lead-in to the subject she’d wanted to talk to her daughter about.
“I have something to show you. Something odd. Edna’s seen it already, but she doesn’t know how odd it really is.”
Samantha looked intrigued. Georgia reached for her purse and brought out the charm bracelet. She left the newspaper articles for later. She held out the bracelet, and Samantha took it.
“Is this yours?” Samantha examined the bracelet, charm by charm, then she looked up when Georgia didn’t answer. “I’ve never seen you wear it.”
“I found it, or rather I should say Edna did. Last week before we went out to the Goddess House. She was playing with it when I finally got back to my office. She said she’d found it on the corner of my desk.”
“Do you know how it got there?”
“I don’t. Nor this.” She took out the envelope and handed it to her daughter.
Samantha dropped the bracelet in her lap and carefully opened the envelope. She unfolded the articles and scanned the top one. Then she looked up.
“This is beyond strange.”
Georgia had been sure Samantha would see it that way, too.
“The thing is, if you look closely at the charms, you’ll see that one of them is the University of Georgia bulldog. And there are two dates before I was born. This wasn’t accidentally left by a student, as I first thought. I think it was left there for me. I think it may have belonged to my mother.”
“Whoa...” Samantha frowned. “Kind of an odd way of dropping back into your life after forty-nine years, wouldn’t you say?”
“Odd and unforgivable. All these years later to contact me with no way for me to contact her back?”
“There was nothing else with it?”
Georgia