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.

“Did she tell you?”

“She told me once, before she got sick. She said the trees made her feel like life could start over every spring.”

He looked at me then.

“I should have brought you here.”

“Yes.”

“I should have told you about your grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“I should have given you her letters.”

“Yes.”

He nodded, accepting each answer.

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel.”

The use of my full name nearly broke me.

Not because it erased anything.

Because for the first time, he said it without using it as a warning or a correction.

“I’m not ready to forgive you,” I said.

“I know.”

“But I don’t want to hate you forever.”

His face tightened.

“Neither do I.”

He left.

I watched the SUV disappear down the road between the trees.

Eleanor stood beside me on the porch.

“You did well,” she said.

“I don’t feel as though I did anything.”