The relationship line said “daughter.” I stared at it because my husband’s brother had no daughter. He had two sons, and I knew both of them. I called the funeral home and asked whether they had any other pages from that service, and the woman said there was a separate condolence book because so many people had attended. She found the page and read me the name again. It was a woman’s name I didn’t recognize, but the address beside it was only three streets from our house. I told her that couldn’t be right. She asked if I wanted a copy of the full page, and I said yes.
I drove home and looked through the rest of the coat pockets. In the inside pocket I found a receipt from a diner dated two days before the funeral. Two meals, paid in cash, and written on the back was the same woman’s first name. I called the diner because it was still there, and the owner remembered my husband because he’d been coming in with the same woman for months. I asked what she looked like. He said she was about my age, wore glasses, and always sat across from my husband in the back booth. Then he said she’d stopped coming after the funeral. I asked whether my husband had ever brought his brother there, and he said no — my husband always came alone with her.
I went back to the funeral home the next morning and asked to see the original guest book myself. The director hesitated, then brought it out. The woman’s signature wasn’t just on the page for my husband’s brother. It appeared again in the visitor log from the following week. I asked why she’d come back. He said she’d returned to collect something she’d left with the funeral director after the service. I asked what it was. He opened the old notes and read me the description: a small brown envelope addressed to my husband. Then he told me my husband had picked it up himself — four days before the funeral.
