Anna was disoriented and on the ground. She still felt a little dizzy and confused about what had happened. Shortly after, she tried to get up from the sidewalk, and many people ran towards her to help her. “What just happened?” Anna wondered.
She quickly looked back and soon figured it out. A car had stopped right behind her. She must have swerved on her bicycle, and as a result, she fell. Fortunately, she didn’t appear to have broken anything. However, her mother’s old necklace was on the floor, completely crushed. Tears began to flow, but then she noticed something between the pieces. Did her mother put something in the necklace for her?
Anna had many questions, but to better understand the importance of the discovery, you need to know her story. Anna was a 68-year-old woman who had recently retired, as had her husband, Thomas. Her children had long since left home, and Anna was preparing for a relaxed life. While this may seem like an ordinary story for a woman, the truth is that it was not at all common in Anna’s life, nor would it ever be. Much of Anna’s life was much more difficult than anyone’s usual standards, especially her childhood, which was more about survival. Anna would carry the memories and mental scars of that time for years.
Anna was born into a poor family in a city where the quality of life depended largely on one’s financial situation. Her parents were poor even before she was born, and the growing family did not help the situation. This obviously had even more negative consequences. In addition to the lack of money, Anna’s birth seemed to change the dynamic of her parents’ relationship. Even though they had always been a very affectionate couple, while Anna’s father, Jon, seemed to want to give his daughter the best life possible by working hard and spending all his free time with her, Anna’s mother, Dorothy, seemed to have a different approach toward her.
This continued for some years. Jon hated his wife’s behavior and felt helpless. He loved her very much and didn’t want to lose her, but he hoped it would be something momentary. However, it would soon become evident that this was not the case. One morning upon waking up, Jon noticed that Dorothy was not in bed. This seemed quite unusual to him. He started looking around the house and woke Anna up. Nothing in the house seemed out of place, but Dorothy was nowhere to be found.
After searching the house, Jon and Anna, who was about 8 years old at the time, began walking around the neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen Dorothy go out that night. To tell the truth, they were lucky because a neighbor who lived across the street had come home around 1:00 a.m. The neighbor told them that at approximately 1:30, he had seen Dorothy leaving the house.
After about 5 or 10 minutes, a luxury car passed him. The driver got out, opened the door for Dorothy, and bowed as she got into the vehicle. After that, they left. Unfortunately, the neighbor didn’t think to write down the car’s license plate and didn’t know the exact model. That wasn’t enough for the police to launch an investigation, so Anna and Jon were left in complete darkness for weeks.
Eventually, one morning, a letter appeared in their mailbox, which seemed to explain what had happened. The letter was very brief but it was from Dorothy. In it, she explained that she had left the family because she had fallen in love with someone else. He was someone much richer than Jon with whom she was going to live the life she deserved and no longer wanted to share with her family.
After recovering from the initial shock of the message, Jon began to notice that something seemed wrong with the letter. It was handwritten, but it was not Dorothy’s handwriting. It was also written in words he had never heard his wife use. With these suspicions, Jon went to the police again but did not get the answers he expected. The police informed him that they viewed this letter as a valid explanation for why his wife left. In fact, it agreed with the neighbor’s story, but no fiber in Jon’s body wanted to stop searching for his wife.
Jon was not given any more time off work to help him, and if he did not return, he would lose his job. With an 8-year-old daughter at home that he had to care for, he simply couldn’t miss his job. Considering all aspects of the situation, Jon realized that he had no other options. Jon gave up searching for his wife and tried to convince himself that the letter was true. He had to accept that she left him. He put his head down and went back to work to take care of himself and Anna, who had to quickly learn to take care of herself.
This situation remained unchanged for some years. At that time, they received no more information about Dorothy and slowly began to forget her. As she faded from Jon’s mind, another woman seized the opportunity. Jon began a new relationship with a beautiful young woman, and they seemed to be in love. It wasn’t long before she and her son were spending time with Jon and Anna. Jon hoped it was the beginning of a wonderful new chapter in his life. Nothing could go wrong. Jon and his new girlfriend hit it off so well. However, there wasn’t the same connection with Anna. She had a cold relationship with her new mother. It was very obvious that the woman only had eyes for her son and saw Anna as an obstacle in her perfect life with Jon.
Because Jon spent a lot of time away from home, Anna, now 15 years old, was often left alone with her new mother. The differences and quarrels were not long in coming. On repeated occasions, Anna went for a long time without eating and cried. She thought many times about telling her father, but she knew how happy he was with this new relationship and didn’t want to ruin it. Finally, Anna decided that leaving home was the best option for her, but how? She didn’t even have enough money for food. But one day, she was presented with an unexpected opportunity.
One day, the doorbell rang in the middle of the day when Anna was home alone. Her father was at work, and her mother was at the supermarket with her son. Anna opened the door and was handed a small package. It had no address and not even a clue where it came from. Anna quickly opened it. The package contained three items: a letter addressed to Anna, a beautiful and expensive necklace filled with diamonds, and a frame with photos of someone Anna recognized as her mother wearing the same necklace.
Still confused, Anna opened the letter and began to read. The letter was very short. It simply said that Dorothy had died two months ago and that her funeral had already taken place. However, there was no information about where her body was buried. The letter ended by explaining that the items in the box were what Dorothy left Anna in her will. Even in the letter itself, it did not mention who sent it or from where.
Anna was very surprised. Sure, she hadn’t seen or heard from her mother in almost seven years, but because of her horrible relationship with her stepmother, she still considered Dorothy to be her real mother and felt very sad about the death. Now, Anna was even more determined to leave the house, but the biggest problem was that she had no money. So she thought that if the necklace was half as valuable as it looked, she could sell it. The necklace, along with the frame, was the only thing left of her mother and in all likelihood, the only thing she would have. Was it worth leaving home now, more than the memory of her mother?
Still unsure, she decided it wasn’t a bad idea to evaluate it first. Anna took the necklace to the jewelry store to get an idea of how much it was worth. The jeweler took the necklace to the back to examine it carefully. It took him almost an hour to get back to talking to Anna, but he came to a very strange conclusion about the necklace. The jeweler told Anna that the entire necklace was fake, a good fake.
It was made almost exclusively of cheap metals and glass, but there was something about the necklace that really caught his attention. This wasn’t a completely fake necklace. The small stone on the large pendant was actually a real diamond and very precious. Anna was very happy with this news. This meant that she could have the best of both worlds. She could sell the diamond to the jewelry store to finance her departure from home, and she could keep the rest of the necklace as a memento of her mother.
And so it happened. The jeweler agreed to pay a reasonable price for the stone. Everything seemed to be going well for Anna, but this fortune did not last too long. The situation at Anna’s house did not improve at all. In fact, it was getting worse. Her arguments with her stepmother seemed to occur more frequently as time went on, and she became more violent.
Her stepmother was against Anna only when Jon was not present, but this time she started screaming and even hit Anna while Jon was sitting in the same room. Anna expected her father to come help her, but he didn’t do anything about it. He just let it happen, and it disappointed Anna greatly. She packed her bags that same night and left the house without telling anyone. She had nowhere to go, so she decided to sleep in the park. The next day, she got on a bus that would take her as far as possible.
She quickly found work as a waitress and saved enough to rent a small apartment for herself, but she wouldn’t end up living alone for long. At the restaurant where she worked, there was a young chef with whom Anna seemed to hit it off from the first moment they met. Anna was very cautious at first, as it was obvious that she was still suffering from some trauma from the past two years, but the young chef, Thomas, kept trying, and eventually, Anna felt comfortable with him.
They started living together after just a few months of dating. They knew they were destined to be together for life. Anna and Thomas married and had children. She had kept everything that reminded her of her childhood in a box and hidden it at the back of the basement. It was there so long that Anna had almost forgotten about it completely. But when the couple and their newborn children moved to a bigger house, she found the box again, and to Anna’s great surprise, this time she felt strong enough to reopen the box and let some of the memories come back to her.
When she opened the lid, the first thing she noticed was the large fake necklace her mother had left her. This necklace was the main reason why she was able to leave everything behind, and she suddenly felt attached, something she had never experienced before. She put it on, and from that moment on, it became an object that she rarely took off. It reminded her of what she had overcome and honored the memory of her mother.
One fateful day, Anna was returning home on her bicycle after doing some shopping. It had been a long time since she had found her mother’s old necklace. In fact, it was almost 25 years. Suddenly, a car came out of nowhere. The driver seemed to have lost control of the wheel and was coming right for Anna. She managed to stay off the road at the last second but lost her balance in the process.
Anna hit the ground hard and lost consciousness for a second. She woke up to people helping her get up. Fortunately, she did not suffer serious injuries, just some bruises and scratches. But her mother’s old necklace, which she was wearing at the time, was in pieces on the floor. Anna was about to cry, but then she noticed something between the pieces. She grabbed it, and it turned out to be a small key.
Anna read what was written on the side of the key, and at that moment, the whole world stopped for a second. On the key was a sticker with her name written on it. How did this key get into her pendant? Why did her mother want her to have it? On the way home, there was only one thing she could think of that would give her more answers.
The only other item next to the necklace that she had inherited from her mother was the frame with her photo. She found the frame, but there was nothing there, just some numbers on the back. Her husband, Thomas, looked at the picture and the numbers on the back, but unlike Anna, he immediately recognized the numbers. The numbers were coordinates.
Anna had already decided that no matter where the coordinates would take her, she would go to the location as soon as possible. Fortunately, it wasn’t far. To her surprise, the coordinates seemed to point to a nearby town. It was in the city where Anna and Thomas lived before they moved. After entering the exact coordinates into Google Maps, it became clear that the place where her mother was trying to take Anna was an old local bank.
Anna and Thomas quickly packed their bags for the night, got into their car, and rushed to the bank as soon as possible. Anna approached the employee and placed the key on the table, surprising the employee. She asked them if they had given that key and if it was possible that it corresponded to some kind of safe. The employee didn’t recognize the key right away, but then Anna told him her name. She typed it into the computer and quickly got a result. There was a secure prepaid reservation for 50 years with them in Anna’s name, and the instructions were that anyone with the key could extract its contents.
The employee escorted the couple to a room where several small safes were located. He pointed to the safe where the key was supposed to work, checked to see if it still worked after all these years, and then left the room to give them some privacy. Anna’s heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. Inside the safe, which was one of the largest in the room, there were some smaller cardboard boxes tied together and a letter taped to the top.
Anna opened the letter and began to read it. The letter began with an apology from her mother for not having been there when she was little and leaving as she did. She always felt guilty for what she had put her through, but she felt like she had no choice. She was shocked by the pressure of raising a child and became depressed because of it, and as a result, her relationship with Anna’s father deteriorated rapidly. In addition, she said that her husband was abusive.
The month Anna’s mother left, she had been in contact with another man who convinced her that he had fallen in love with her. He promised her that if she moved in with him, he would find a way for Anna to join them later. He was quite wealthy and assured her that he could handle the legal proceedings. But she quickly discovered that she had made a big mistake, as the man had no intention of looking for Anna. Under these circumstances, she planned to escape and stole money from her new husband. She then lied about her death and sent the package to Anna. That was the end of the letter.
Seeing that her boxes hadn’t been touched since they were stored in the bank, it seemed like her mother’s plan had worked. Her eyes began to fill with tears. The couple didn’t want the money, so they donated it to charity. But years later, a cryptic message was sent to the bank, which would have to be given to the person who came to open the safe.
It was another set of coordinates, and when Thomas looked at them, he immediately realized it was another place to go. It was the cemetery where her mother was buried. Knowing where her mother was buried was worth far more to Anna than any amount of money she could have left behind. She was able to give her the final respect she deserved, even though she arrived too late. The couple stayed there for about an hour before returning home, with Anna promising to return at least once a year for her mother’s birthday.
