The drawer stuck the way it always had, swollen with humidity and the particular stubbornness of furniture that has decided, on your behalf, to keep a secret. Temi pulled twice before it gave, and when it did, it gave all at once, spilling open like a mouth mid-confession.
Inside: forty-one envelopes, none of them sealed, all of them addressed in her mother's narrow, slanting hand. Some bore stamps from countries her mother had never visited. Most bore no stamps at all, as if the act of writing had been the whole point, and the sending an afterthought no one had gotten around to.
She did not recognize all the names. Dele, twice. Aunty Ronke, once, underlined. And near the bottom, worn soft at the corners from handling, an envelope with no name on it at all — just a date, and beneath the date, in smaller letters: for whenever you're ready.
Temi sat on the floor of her mother's old room with her back against the bed frame, the way she used to sit when she was small and the house felt too big for the two of them. Outside, a delivery truck reversed somewhere on the street, beeping its small mechanical apology into the afternoon.
She did not open the unnamed envelope. Not yet. She only held it, weighing it the way you weigh a decision you've already made but haven't told yourself about.