the Key

Lee got home from another day at the office, parked his car in his assigned condo stall and went to pick up his mail, which rarely had anything important in it. But today there was a letter from an attorney attached to a small square box
.
Lee took it inside and opened the letter that read as follows:

“Dear Mr. Galbraith: Enclosed is a letter from your recently departed mother and a small box. Her wish was that I deliver it to you two months after her passing. This is her final request of me. Best regards. Don Spears JD”

He opened the letter from his mom with shaky hands. It seemed so odd to receive something from her. It read:

Dear Sweet Lee: This small box contains the key to my safe deposit box. I have enclosed the security information you will need to get into the safe deposit room where the box resides. Use the key and take everything that is inside. You can leave the key with the bank and the account will close automatically. I hope you will find some answers to your questions there. I did what I had to do. I hope you will understand and see it in your heart to forgive me.

What was this all about? It was too late to go to the bank tonight. He had to be at work the first thing the next morning. The next day at lunchtime, Lee headed to his mom’s old bank where he used the key to open the long and narrow box. The following items were Inside:

A sealed envelope
An Ancestry DNA kit
A cassette tape
A small bag of his favorite salted licorice.

He opened the envelope and inside was a photo of a man he had never seen before. None of this made any sense except for the bag of salted licorice, a present that his mom always gave him. The only candy he really liked. There must be some kind of explanation on the cassette tape, but who had a cassette tape player anymore? No one. So, Lee went back to work and on his way opened up the salted licorice, the best stuff from Iceland, and as he tasted it he could see his mom’s face again and the smile she always had when she gave him presents.

After work, Lee went to Goodwill and picked up an old cassette player. He got home and put in the tape. He heard the sound of his mom’s lighter followed by the sound of her deeply inhaling from a cigarette. Emphysema was the cause of his mom’s death. Then he heard his mom’s gasping and gravelly voice.

“My dear Lee. (this was followed by a prolonged period of gasping and coughing). The photo you have is a picture of your real father. His name was Jimmy and we had a three-year-long affair. You were the result of our love that we could tell no one about. The pen is his. Use the test to find your biological relatives if you want to. (more gasping, more coughing) Please don’t think badly of me, Lee, child of my love.” (more horrible gasping and then the tape ends.)

His eyes filled with tears as he put Jimmy’s picture on the refrigerator, took out a piece of his salted licorice and started to read the instructions on the DNA kit.

— DanielSouthGate