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I sat there for a moment, my whole body trembling, and listened once more to be sure I had not been discovered. It was very quiet. Even the creaking in the house seemed to have stopped as if the house itself was now holding its breath I brought the knife to the nearest carton and cut the strings. Then I opened the carton and directed the flashlight's beam into it.

Neatly packaged, each item wrapped in cellophane, were old toys, toys for a little girl: small dolls, doll's clothing, teacups and dishes, toy furniture and a dollhouse that had been carefully taken apart. I lifted each thing out of the carton carefully and inspected it. Someone had painted tears on the cheeks of some of the doll's faces. I could tell they were painted because the tears were un- even. The face of one doll was smashed in as though someone had taken a hammer to it.

Were these dolls once mine? None of them looked familiar. Were they Geraldine's? Why were they hidden away like this? It was as if someone's childhood was to be kept secret or buried forever.

I went to the carton on my right and cut the strings, again slowly opening it and shining the light down again to see items wrapped in cellophane, only this time, the box was full of clothing. I took one article out of its packaging and held it up. It was a light yellow dress for a toddler. I went to the next garment and the next, taking each out and inspecting it to discover the same thing: clothing for a very small child. They all looked new, never worn. Whose clothes were these? Mine? Geraldine's? Why were they all stored up here instead of being given away or even thrown away, which was what Geraldine usually did with old discarded things?

I turned and slid over to my left to open the next carton, cutting the strings faster and pulling up the lids. Here I found what I would call mementoes: snippets of pretty ribbons, jeweled combs, charm bracelets for a very tiny wrist, a pair of bronzed baby shoes, a cigar box full of old pictures, and a handpainted jewelry box that was also a music box. It didn't play anything when I opened it because it needed to be wound. I was happy about that. The music might have woken Geraldine. Everything was neatly wrapped in cellophane as well. Whose things were these?

With even more trepidation now, I turned to the last carton. I undid the strings and opened it slowly. On top was a baby's crib blanket with a scented soap placed on it. I took it out carefully and laid it aside. Underneath was a small stack of envelopes tied with thick rubber bands and nothing else. The rubber bands practically fell apart before I slipped them off. There was no address on the front of any of the envelopes, no name. They were originally pink, but time had faded them so they were a light cream color. All of them had been opened.

I took out the letter in the top envelope and unfolded it.

Dear Cathy, it began, and I sucked in my breath. Who had written to me?

I know you won't read my letters until you are much older than you are now My daughter Geraldine has promised me that when you are old enough to understand, she will be sure to give you my letters. Also, by the time you are given them, you will, she assures me, be told the truth about your birth.

What a funny way for a mother to introduce herself to her own child, but that's what these letters are meant to do. All these years before you have these letters in your hands, you will have thought of me as your grandmother I can't begin to tell you what a strange feeling it has been and will continue to be for me to have you call me Grandmother and for me to pretend you are my granddaughter and not my daughte

r. I hope I can eventually get you to

understand why it had to be this way.

The most wonderful thing for a mother to do is give her daughter the benefit of her own experience and wisdom. It is really the only legacy that matters. I feel certain that money won't be a problem for you, so inheriting my jewelry or assuming the trust fund I have set aside to be given to you on your eighteenth birthday is just window dressing when it comes to the real things a mother can give a daughter.

Trust fund? I thought. Geraldine never mentioned any trust fund to me. When was she going to do that? I had only a year to go to my eighteenth birthday. I returned to the letter.

Let me begin by telling you the first honest thing since you have been given the truth about yourself I never had a good and happy marriage. I married for all the wrong reasons. My mother used to parade around me when I dressed for parties and chant, "Remember; sweetheart, it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is with a poor man." She had me believe that falling in love was something you had complete control oven and you could direct your deepest emotions in the direction you wanted, any time you wanted. She would laugh at the very idea that love happened miraculously, bells rang in your head or in your heart, that you could look across a room and see a perfect stranger and suddenly feel your very soul blossom with happiness. All that, she told me, was just poppycock. That was her favorite word for most things she denied or disbelieved: poppycock. It was her father's word. I hated it, hated to hear it, but I never said so to her face.

You couldn't have found a more obedient child I was brought up in a household that was probably closer to a little monarchy than anything else. My father was the king and my mother was the queen and I was merely one of their subjects. When one or the other made a pronouncement, it thundered with godly weight on my little shoulders. My father believed that fear comes first and then, almost as an afterthought, there was love. He wanted me to be afraid of him, and he got what he wanted.

All this is preparation for telling you why I did what you will have a hard time understanding ...why I gave you away. Oh, I suppose I didn't give you away as much as I shifted you to another place in our family. I knew I couldn't raise you as my daughter, yet I couldn't stand the thought of you living with complete strangers. I wanted to be able to see you when- ever I wanted to see you, as many times as I wanted. Pretending to be your grandmother gave me the opportunity to show love and affection for you, something I could never have done otherwise. I hope that I'm going to be able to do that for a long, long time and one day, after you have read my letters, I hope we can meet some- where, just the two of us, and I can hug you the way a mother should hug her daughter and you might learn to hug me as a daughter would hug her mother Maybe that's a fantasy. We don't realize how precious and how rare fantasies can become as we get older and are forced to admit to cold realities.

Another reason I gave you to Geraldine is that Geraldine has been a more obedient daughter to my husband and me than I was to my father and mother, and I knew she would do everything she was told to do as she was told to do it. I suppose my husband and I were no better than my parents, running our family just like the monarchy in which I was raised. At least, that was how we behaved toward each other

Geraldine is very different from me. She's more like my husband, but sometimes I think she's better off the way she is because I've suffered in ways she'll never experience. She has never truly loved and lost, not in the passionate sense of those words.

I have, and if you're reading this letter; you're probably old enough to conclude even before I tell you, that the man I loved, truly loved passionately, was your real father.

I'm looking at the clock now and I see the time it's taken me to write these thoughts. I'll have to stop for now The man you know as your grandfather is calling for me. We're on our way to one of his business dinners and they're always so important that we can't be a minute late.

I guess I should have started writing this earlier; but (and you might find this either amusing or interesting) I looked at myself in the mirror and I suddenly saw you. I saw myself in your face and 1 thought what if all this time goes by and we never look at each other truthfully? It put such a pang of fear in my heart that I sat right down and began writing.

Of course, I'll write again and again. For now, I'll have to hide this letter; just as I've had to hide my real feelings. My fingers tremble as I sign this.

Love, Mother

I sat there with the letter in my hands for a moment and then looked back over the other cartons. All these things must have been things she had given me, but I didn't recognize any of it. Geraldine kept them from me, I realized.

Surely, that was so, but why keep toys and blankets, combs and jewelry from me?

Suddenly, I heard a noise below, a loud clap of wood. My heart jumped. I turned and looked down through the crawl space door. My ladder! It was gone! I heard it being carried away.

"Mother!" I screamed. "Mother!"

She had taken the ladder back to the garage. A few minutes later, she appeared in the pantry. She was in her robe and slippers and she looked up at me.

"Why did you take away the ladder?"