Tides Between Us

The Letter

Carved into the lid was a sculpture of a wolf’s head.

My knees felt weak. “Is that mine?”

“It has always been,” Grandma said, setting it on the table. The buckles popped open like they’d just been oiled. Inside: folded clothes. A dark sweater. Heavy boots. All in my size. All brand new, but the style looked old.

“You knew?” I said.

“I knew nothing, child,” Grandma responded. She took her grocery bag from the table and began arranging everything where it belonged in the kitchen.

I quietly stood at the side of the kitchen, staring at Grandma. The kitchen smelled like flour and cinnamon. The brown cabinets had turned black with age, the golden knobs tarnished to black. One door no longer shut properly because it gave up years ago. The countertop had an everlasting stain that looked like a pot of stew spilled years before I was born. The floor pattern was probably once colorful, but the colors were gone now.

Every piece of kitchen equipment was old and barely working.

Grandma walked toward the suitcase on the table while I followed her. She zipped the suitcase closed.

The sound felt too final. Too loud in a kitchen that had never been loud a day in my life.

Questions rose in my throat like a lump. But my mouth wouldn’t open. Was this a joke? Some kind of test? Since when did Grandma own a suitcase with wolf carvings and my name stitched in silver thread? Stitched before I could even spell it.

My whole life felt like a mystery waiting to be solved. Like something had always been missing. Everyone knew something about me that I didn’t.

“Grandma—” My voice burst out before I could stop it. “What’s going on?”

Grandma’s head snapped up. She stared at me, fierce, and hissed, “Shhh. You talk too much for your age, child. Not one more word, Selene.”

She turned back to the suitcase, smoothing her hands over the leather like she was saying goodbye. To it. To me.

“When?” I choked out, my voice trembling.

“You’ll be traveling in a few weeks’ time,” Grandma said, very calmly. “It’s nothing to fear. It’s for the best.”

The wolf on the suitcase seemed to watch me. Waiting.

And the worst part? In a few weeks I’d be leaving everything I’d ever known… for something I couldn’t even place.

Grandma turned to me. “You got A’s because you have always been theirs, child,” she said, voice soft. “You always were. And now you will go back.”

I stopped pacing. In my hands was the envelope. The heavy brown one with the silver wax seal. I hadn’t even realized I was holding it until now.

Grandma’s eyes locked on it. Her hands tightened around nothing. An apple broke free from the grocery bag on the counter and rolled across the kitchen, coming to rest against my old shoe.

Neither of us said a word.

Grandma walked toward me and stretched out her hand, and I placed the letter in Grandma’s hand like I understood the unspoken request.

Grandma opened the seal, took out the big letter, turned the envelope over, and slid one finger inside.

I blinked. I hadn’t even noticed there was a second letter in the envelope.

Grandma pulled out the second letter. Smaller and folded once.

The paper was the same heavy brown color, but this one had no letterhead. No crest, just typed lines.

Grandma unfolded it. Read through it and smiled.

Her smile wasn’t happy. It was the kind of smile people have when separated from their loved ones. Relieved and wrecked all at once.

She held the small letter out to me. Her hand was steady. Too steady.

I took it. The words were short and straight to the point:

Due to your excellent grades, Silvercrest Academy believes you have great potential.

I read it out loud.

Grandma and I both stared at each other quietly. Grandma opened the big letter now. Read it like she had been waiting seventeen years to see it. She pressed the silver wax seal to her lips for half a second.

Then she set the letter down, smoothed it flat with her palm, and looked at the clock above the stove.

“5:12 p.m.,” Grandma said.

“5:12 p.m.?” I asked.

Grandma stared at me fiercely for a moment. Then she turned back to the suitcase, the one with the wolf carved into the lid. The one that had been on the table this whole time.

The same one from the pantry. The one she never had to pull down, because it was already here. Waiting.