My father threw me out on my eighteenth birthday, stole the $3,000 I’d saved from working after school, and used it for my stepbrother. Nine days later, while I was digging through a restaurant dumpster for something to eat, a stranger in an expensive suit called my name and told me my supposedly dead grandfather had left me everything. But there was one condition nobody had warned me about.

“You knew him?”

“For thirty years.”

She set the basket down.

“Your attorney called. He said you might arrive today.”

I looked at the house.

“Did you know he had a grandson?”

“I knew he had a daughter. I suspected he had a grandson.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Eleanor’s eyes held no surprise.

“Your father made that difficult.”

The answer was so direct that I didn’t know what to say.

She picked up the basket again.

“Come inside. You look cold.”

The kitchen was warm and bright, with old wooden cabinets and a long table beneath a window. A kettle whistled on the stove. Everything seemed cared for but untouched, as though the house had been waiting.

Eleanor poured tea and placed a plate of sandwiches in front of me.

“I’m not hungry,” I said automatically.

“That’s what people say when they’re very hungry.”