I kept my voice below a whisper.

Rowena, I said.

The probate files reached your post box.

There was a long pause, filled with the static of three thousand miles of ocean cable, and I pictured a woman in a small room with her fingers against an old scar on her temple.

“I saw my father’s signature,” Rowena said finally.

“On the papers he filed.

Jonathan used a blue ballpoint.

My father only ever used black ink, from a fountain pen.” I want to set down what that sentence did to me, because it told me everything about the woman I was speaking to.