The envelope contained no money, only a penciled request: hold this until Friday. After her brother's death, Tala assumed it concerned wages he had been unable to collect.
The pay clerk's book recorded his wages paid in full. A separate note explained that he asked the clerk to keep a small amount aside for a birthday gift, then collected it before leaving on Friday. The envelope belonged to that private arrangement, not an unpaid balance.
Tala recognized the date as the week he bought their mother a winter coat. She remembered teasing him for choosing the wrong size. The paper revealed the care behind a gift the family mostly recalled as an awkward joke.
She placed the envelope inside a photograph album near the picture of their mother wearing the coat. The empty space inside it no longer suggested money withheld. It marked a plan carried through, imperfectly but deliberately, by someone who had asked another person to help him keep a small promise until the end of the working week.