Then came the line that made the kitchen feel too bright.

“If anything happens to me, Diane is the only one I trust with this.

Ray wants the boy for the check, not for the boy.”

For eighteen years I had believed Ray left me on that dirt road because he was fed up with me.

That was the story I’d carried around.

Now the letter said he had wanted me for six hundred fifty dollars a month.

If that was true, why did he kick me out of the truck at thirteen?