It was a cold, dark, snowy morning. Chloe Vance jumped out of the shower, dripping and freezing, unable to find the one clean towel she’d forgotten to wash. Her phone, which had been ringing nonstop, started up again.

She snatched it. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Ms. Chloe Vance?” a dry voice asked. “I’m calling about your great-grandfather, Ellis Vance. He’s passed away.”

Chloe leaned against the wall, the cold tile shocking her bare skin. She said nothing, trying to place the name. Ellis. The musician. She hadn’t seen him since she was a toddler, before her memories had truly formed.

“Alright,” she said, her voice hollow. “How can I help?”

“Ma’am, he left everything to you.”

Chloe was stunned. What could he possibly have? He was, by all family accounts, a poor musician who never amounted to much more than a weekend gig. The lawyer wanted to meet to discuss the details. Chloe glanced at the clock and saw she was already late for her Music Theory lecture, a class she was beginning to hate. She’d skip it, just like she’d planned to anyway. She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

She took an Uber to the lawyer’s office. The gold leaf on the door’s window read, “McGraw & McGraw.” Why use the same name twice? she grumbled to herself as she walked in.

Mr. McGraw (the first one, she assumed) laid it all out. She was now the owner of a few miscellaneous items: an old, battered guitar case, a bank account with exactly $100 in it, and a house in Greenwood, Mississippi. 101 Old Grenada Rd.

Chloe, a music major who hadn’t touched her own guitar in weeks, felt a small, strange twinge of curiosity about the case.

“It’s the old family home,” the lawyer explained, shuffling papers. “Hasn’t been lived in for some years, I’m afraid. It’s dilapidated, but you should see for yourself if there’s anything worth keeping.”

Back in her apartment, Chloe packed a small bag, then took another Uber to the train station. The ticket to Greenwood cost more than the $100 Ellis had left her. As the train rolled south, she watched the snowy Chicago suburbs melt into a cold, flat, dry landscape of farmland, where nothing had yet begun to grow. She had arrived at her ancestors’ original home.

She used the old skeleton key the lawyer had given her. The door didn’t so much open as sag, nearly falling off its hinges as she pushed it.

The air hit her first, not just dusty, but thick with the smell of pine, old paper, and stagnant time. The house was held together by silence. Old furniture stood shrouded in drop-cloths, like ghosts in obscurity. A mouse scurried across the floor, and the sound of its tiny claws on the wood was shockingly loud in the stillness. Chloe flinched and hurried to the next room.

Upstairs was more of the same, more junk, more dust, more silence. In one of the back bedrooms, a heavy, old-style winter coat was laid out on the bed, as if waiting for someone. Maybe this is worth keeping, she thought.

She picked it up. It was heavy, made of real wool. As she shook it out, a single, sealed envelope fell from the inner pocket and landed on the creaky wood floor.

It was addressed in elegant, faded cursive to a “Mrs. Elizabeth Vance” in Jackson. The return address was just this house. Her hands trembling slightly, Chloe slit it open and began to read. The cursive was desperate, but dignified.

“Dear Lizzie,

f you could find it in your heart to help, we need a little extra money to pay the bills and keep the farm going. I know you are blessed, and I hate to ask, but I’m sending this letter with Ellis, so he can pass it along to you. He’s not asking, I am. Please, I beg you. I will repay you as soon as I can.”

What farm? Chloe wondered. The lawyer had only mentioned a house. She pulled out her phone and, after a few failed attempts, got a weak signal. She called McGraw’s office.

“The farm?” he said, his voice tinny. “Oh, that was lost to the bank long before you were born, Ms. Vance. Severe lack of payments, it says here. Decades ago.”

Chloe stood in the silent, cold room, the letter in one hand and the phone in the other. She grabbed the coat and the letter and walked out, leaving the sagging door open. She would figure out what to do with the house later. Let it fall to the ground, for all she cared. It wasn’t far from it.

Back home in her Chicago apartment, her phone rang. It was Dora. Chloe knew of her, some distant cousin from the “other” side of the family, the wealthy side nobody talked to. Dora was calling to offer condolences, though she admitted she’d never met Ellis either.

On a hunch, Chloe asked, “Dora, do you know who ‘Lizzie’ was?”

“Oh, of course,” Dora said, surprised. “That was my great-grandmother, Elizabeth. Why?”

Chloe’s pulse quickened. She explained the house, the coat, and the letter.

There was a long silence on the other end. “My God,” Dora said, her voice full of shock. “We never knew they were having money trouble. My great-grandparents were quite well off. They owned several businesses. They would have gladly helped. They always wondered why that side of the family cut them off, they just assumed they were too proud.”

Chloe’s heart sank as the whole, tragic picture snapped into focus. Ellis, young and full of dreams, was rushing to leave Greenwood for the bright lights of Chicago. In his hurry, he’d forgotten his heavy winter coat, the one with the letter tucked inside.

His mother, Chloe’s great-great-grandmother, must have waited by the mailbox every day. When no answer came, she must have believed Lizzie was cruel, ignoring her plea. And Lizzie’s family, as Dora just proved, lived their whole lives thinking their family was too proud to ask for help.

An entire family history of bitterness, resentment, and poverty, all split down the middle by a simple, forgotten coat.

Chloe walked out of her apartment, down the stairs, and into the snowy alley. Letter and coat in hand, she stood by the dumpster. She looked at the two objects, the proof of a tragic, simple mistake that had rerouted generations.

She threw them both into the garbage and watched them disappear into the filth.

Chloe went back inside her small, cold apartment. She sat on her bed for a long time, the silence of the Mississippi house seeming to have followed her home. She looked at her own guitar, standing in the corner. She picked it up, plucked a single, dead-sounding string, and then set it back down.

She opened her laptop and spent the rest of the day researching how to change her major.