I had read it then, but only in the way a grieving daughter reads things she cannot yet bear to understand.

Harper, it began, the company is not your inheritance alone.

It is your responsibility to decide what kind of place it will be after I am gone.

You need not become me.

You only need to remain yourself while making difficult choices.

I sat on the concrete floor and cried.

I had spent so much of the past year believing I was becoming the kind of woman my father wanted.

His words reminded me that I did not need to earn his approval through strength or success.