“Then where did she get it?” Russell asked.
“Twelve thousand, eight hundred,” I said, ignoring his question as I straightened the edges of the bills.
I kept counting until the final total sat in twelve neat columns on the table.
“Eighteen thousand, nine hundred and forty dollars,” I said.
Russell looked at his watch again. “We should put it in the bank. We can split it fifty-fifty and get the house listed.”
“We aren’t splitting anything until I know where it came from,” I said.
“It’s just cash, Linda,” he said. “People her age didn’t trust banks.”
“Mama had a checking account,” I said. “She went to the First County Bank every Friday after work.”
I looked down at the empty tin. There was something else at the very bottom, beneath the black grease pencil mark Mama had made to show the flour level.
Underneath the very last stack of fifties at the bottom of the tin, a folded piece of yellow lined paper remained. It was three pages long, written in Mama’s tight, slanted cursive with a blue ballpoint pen. The edges were soft and worn, as if she had folded and unfolded it dozens of times.
