I read the first line standing there in the dark, and the floor seemed to tilt a few degrees under me. Genevieve — everything they believe they inherited was stolen.

Chapter 7 — The Letter

I sat down on the floor of that dark living room with my back against his armchair, the way I used to sit as a girl, and I read the whole letter, and then I read the files, and the shape of what my family had done came up out of the pages like something surfacing from deep water.

It had started, the way these things do, with an offer to help.

After my grandmother died, my grandfather had been grief-stricken and adrift, and my father had stepped in to “manage things,” to take the burden of the finances off him during a hard time.

It was a kindness.