“Would you like to leave personal messages?”
“Yes.”
“Sealed?”
Naomi laughed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“If I have something important enough to change how somebody understands their life, I will try saying it while I have a mouth.”
The attorney smiled.
“Reasonable.”
“Learned expensively.”
Naomi did write letters.
Love letters.
Memories.
Recipes.
Stories about Leon.
Ruby.
Vivian.
Lillian.
Nothing that changed legal facts.
That distinction mattered.
When Naomi was eighty-six, Lillian died.
Cancer.
Fast.
Naomi sat beside her cousin’s bed during the final afternoon.
Lillian could still talk.
Barely.
She looked toward Naomi.
“Yellow dress.”
Naomi smiled.
“What about it?”
“Ugly.”
Naomi laughed.
“You loved that dress.”
“I was nine.”
“Bad judgment.”
Lillian smiled weakly.
“You cried too much.”
“You dragged me.”
“Saved you.”
Naomi rolled her eyes.
“James Holloway saved me.”
“No.”
Lillian’s voice was faint.
“I got him.”
Naomi laughed through tears.
“Yes.”
“You did.”
Lillian looked satisfied.
A few minutes later she whispered:
“First car.”
Naomi took her hand.
“Always.”
Lillian closed her eyes.
She died that night.
Naomi kept the two yellow dresses together afterward.
Lillian’s daughter found Vivian’s in the attic.
Faded.
Wrinkled.
Still carrying the old department-store label.
Naomi placed them side by side in a cedar box.
Not museum pieces.
Family objects.
Her granddaughter Avery asked whether they should donate them with the Carter business records.
Naomi said no.
“Why?”
“Because historians already have enough.”
Avery laughed.
Then:
“What happens to them?”
“Whatever you want after I’m gone.”
“Burn?”
Naomi stared.
Avery raised both hands.
“Joke.”
“Bad one.”
Family.
By the time Naomi reached ninety, almost nobody remembered the 1969 funeral firsthand.
The story belonged to descendants.
Naturally, they told it wrong.
Some said Vivian tried to throw Naomi out of the funeral entirely.
False.
She tried to place her in another car and used cruel words explaining it.
Some said James Holloway arrived from the courthouse at the last second.
False.
He had attended the funeral all morning.