The first thing I found in my mother-in-law's suitcase was a photograph of me, asleep on my own couch.
I was lying on my side with a blanket pulled up to my chin and my mouth slightly open. My hair was stuck to my cheek. In the bottom corner, printed in tiny orange numbers, was a date and a time: October 19th, 3:12 a.m.
I had no memory of that night. None.
I knelt on the floor of the guest room, staring at that picture, and I felt something cold slide down the back of my neck.
Somebody had stood over me while I slept and taken my photograph.
Then somebody had printed it, wrapped it in tissue paper, and locked it away.
It was ten minutes to ten on a Tuesday morning, the twenty-seventh of October. My husband had driven his mother to physical therapy at a quarter past nine. I had told them I couldn't come because of another headache, and Derek had kissed my forehead and said, "Rest, babe. You've been so tired lately."
I had been so tired lately.
That was the thing. For three weeks I had been tired in a way I couldn't explain, a heavy, underwater kind of tired. I forgot words in the middle of sentences. I lost whole afternoons. I had started, quietly, without telling a single soul, to wonder if I was losing my mind.
And now here was my picture, and I had a terrible feeling that I was about to find out I wasn't.
I should tell you how I got into that suitcase, because it matters.
It was a navy blue hard-shell Samsonite with a little four-digit combination lock. Since the day my mother-in-law moved in, she had lived out of it. She never unpacked it into the dresser. She kept it zipped and locked in the corner of the guest room closet, and every time anyone came near it, her face did something very fast and very small.
The first time I reached to move it so I could vacuum, Lorraine said sharply, "Leave that, please."
Then she softened. "My hip, dear. I don't want anybody lifting it."
That morning, with the house empty and my heart pounding, I sat down in front of that lock and tried her birthday. Nothing. I tried her late husband's. Nothing.
Then, on a whim, I tried my son's birthday.
Zero, three, one, nine.
The lock clicked open.
Lorraine loved my six-year-old son more than she loved anything on earth. It had simply never occurred to her that the person she was locking out might know exactly what she loved best.
On top were two blouses, a nightgown, and a pair of pink slippers, folded neatly, like a display in a store window.
Underneath was a layer of tissue paper.
And underneath that was me.