Of them. Of what his father did to my mother. He said if his mother ever learned the truth, it would kill her.”
“His mother has been gone for years now, Grace. He still said nothing.”
“He was ashamed.”
She had no answer to that.
I opened one of the envelopes.
It was David’s handwriting, addressed to Grace, dated the week he was diagnosed.
He wrote that he had been sending Grace’s mother money for years.
That when her mother died, he had placed Grace with a family friend, a woman named Marta Hensley, and paid for her schooling from a distance.
I opened one of the envelopes.
That he could not die knowing she would be alone in the world.
He listed Marta’s address in careful print, and beneath it the number of a bank account he had opened in Grace’s name, funded quietly over the last decade.
I
