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.

“Where are his records?”

“In the study. He left instructions that you were to have them after you arrived.”

Eleanor stood and took my empty plate.

“Your room is upstairs. The blue room at the end of the hall.”

I followed her through the house.

The walls held framed photographs of apple trees, workers, and old family gatherings. In one picture, my mother stood beside a younger James Brooks. She was laughing at something outside the frame.

I stopped.

“Was she happy here?”

Eleanor looked at the photograph.

“Sometimes.”

“That isn’t very reassuring.”

“Families are rarely one thing.”

She continued upstairs.

The blue room had a narrow bed, a writing desk, and a window overlooking the orchard. On the desk sat a wooden box.

My name was carved into the lid.

Eleanor paused in the doorway.

“Your grandfather told me not to open it.”

“What’s inside?”

“I don’t know.”