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.

“When she died,” Richard said, “the designation should have been reviewed by the estate attorney. It appears that never happened.”

“Because Dad handled everything.”

My father’s voice was barely audible.

“I didn’t know.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” I said. “But you should have.”

He accepted that without argument.

Eleanor entered carrying a small box.

“There’s something else,” she said.

She placed it on the table.

The lid was marked with my mother’s initials.

“Where did you find it?”

“In the linen cupboard in the blue room. Your grandfather told me it belonged to Claire, but he never opened it.”

Inside were three things: a hospital bracelet, a pressed white flower, and a folded note.

The note was addressed to my grandfather.

Dad,

If Nathan ever comes to you, please give him the enclosed letter. If he doesn’t, keep it anyway. I know I have made a mess of things, but I want him to know that my leaving was not because of him.