It was her own.

Eleven years of her own looping, elegant hand, addressed to me and to her grandchildren by name — and every seal unbroken.

Every letter she had ever written us, returned to her now in a locked box, having never once been read by the people she wrote them to.

She looked up from the envelopes to her son, and I watched her face travel a terrible distance — from confusion, to comprehension, to a disgust so total it seemed to age her ten years in the space of a breath.

“You,” she said, and her voice shook the chandelier.