Two days after I buried my mother, the funeral home called and asked me a question that made no sense.

“Ma’am,” the director said, in a voice so careful it immediately put me on edge, “did your mother own a red violin case?”

I almost said no and hung up.

Not because I was grieving too hard to think clearly, although I was. Not because I had any reason to distrust funeral homes, although I hated every room in that building and wanted never to hear from them again. I nearly hung up because the question itself was absurd.

My mother had never owned a violin.

My mother was the least violin-case kind of person I had ever known.

Evelyn Carter taught second grade in Omaha for thirty-four years. She wore practical shoes in all weather. She clipped coupons with such concentration you would have thought national security depended on it. She alphabetized her spice rack for fun, wrote grocery lists in neat blue ink, and believed very strongly that extension cords were not to be trusted. She did not collect mysterious objects. She did not keep romantic relics. She did not have a wild streak, an artistic streak, a secretive streak, or any streak that would lead to red leather luggage of any kind.

She believed in good posture, mailed birthday cards early, and corrected restaurant bills if they forgot to charge her for iced tea.

That was my mother.

So when the funeral director repeated the question, I stood in my kitchen with a mug of cold coffee in my hand and said, “You must have the wrong family.”

“We don’t,” he said softly. “There’s a strip of tape across the handle with your maiden name on it.”

Something in my chest tightened.

He went on before I could respond. “It was in our temporary property lockup. It should have been released with her other effects, but there was a complication last night. A man came in after visitation hours asking for it specifically.”

I stared at the rain-dark window over my sink.

“A man?” I said. “What man?”

“He wouldn’t give his name.”

I set the coffee down because my hand had started shaking. “And why exactly are you calling me now?”

The director cleared his throat. “Because when we checked the file, we discovered the case required a key. And your mother was buried with it.”