On my wedding night, I had to give my bed to my mother-in-law because she

On the white sheet, there was a small, intricately embroidered handkerchief. It was old-fashioned, the kind of thing you might find in an antique store, soft and frayed at the edges. But it wasn’t the handkerchief itself that left me speechless; it was the monogram stitched into the corner: “E.L.”

“E.L.” was not my mother-in-law’s initials, nor did they belong to anyone in our immediate family that I could think of. As I stood there, the questions began to swirl in my mind. Who did the handkerchief belong to, and why was it here, on this most peculiar of mornings?

My husband stirred, and his eyes fluttered open, squinting against the morning light. “Morning,” he mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. His movement woke my mother-in-law. She blinked several times, seemingly confused about her surroundings, before sitting up and smoothing her hair.