“Its all in the green hat box in the closet,” she’d told me that day, “all the evidence we need.”
I knew the box. It had been stashed at the top corner of mum’s closet since pretty much as far back as I can remember. As if it were a permanent fixture in there, a dark green artifact hidden in the shadows, silent and ignored as time moved along. None of us could reach it nor ever really thought to try to. Just like the well-worn string of pearls that she wound around her neck every morning and then carefully laid to rest at night on its own special hook on her nightstand. Just a part of the paraphernalia that came with her. Something when pointed out we associated with her but never really noticed on its own.
But of course it made sense to me, later as I became more aware of how adults operate, that she would have had a use for that green hat box. That she surely wouldn’t have been so utterly simple as to actually keep a hat in it.
The problem now is, how to get to the closet? He’s kept us so firmly locked out of that house for so long now. I wouldn’t even know where to begin trying to get back in.
(Dear Readers: I intend to keep posting installments for as long as my imagination takes me with The Green Hat Box. One a week might be optimistic in the face of real life, so I won't make any time promises. I would love to hear from you in the in between times - both congratulatory and critical. :) )
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