I could carry my own cowardice, God help me, I had carried it for ten years.

I could not carry watching him win.

And then he decided he wanted to be a senator, and I could not do it anymore.

I could not let him climb one rung higher on that ladder while your daughter’s letter sat locked in a box because I was too afraid to keep my word.”

And then, before I could ask her anything else, before I could reach for her or stop her, she got into her silver sedan and pulled the door shut and drove away, leaving me standing in the cemetery with the envelope in my hand and a cloud of exhaust hanging in the cold air and ten years of buried truth suddenly, violently, unburied.

“Grandma?” Noah’s voice broke through the roaring in my ears.