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.

“I don’t know whether any of them will forgive me,” he said.

“Forgiveness isn’t something you can schedule.”

“I know.”

“Keep doing what you said you’d do.”

He nodded.

After the ceremony, he placed a small envelope beside the plaque.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Your mother’s wedding ring. I found it in a box.”

I didn’t touch it.

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“Because it belongs to her. And because I kept too many things from you.”

I accepted it.

The ring was simple, a narrow band with a tiny engraving inside.

C.B. to T.B. — always honest.

I almost smiled at the painful irony.

My father saw my expression.

“She believed it,” he said.

“She believed it could be true.”

He looked down.

“I wish I had made it true.”

“So do I.”

We sat beneath the flowering trees until the light began to fade.