Chapter 11 — Ten Years of Fear

“Why?” I demanded, and the grief and the anger were rising in me together now, tangled and hot.

“Why didn’t you give this to me ten years ago?

At the funeral?

The week after?

Why did my grandson grow up without a single answer while you sat on the truth for a decade?”

Sarah’s face crumpled, and what came out of her then was pure, corroded, ten-year-old guilt, the kind that eats a person from the inside.

“Because I was afraid,” she said.