“Thanks to everything you gave us.”

He reached out and took my hand, his grip gone faint but still warm.

“You have that backward, Clara,” he said softly, and a tear stood in the corner of his eye.

“You gave me something far more valuable than anything I gave you.

At the very end of a long life, when I had all but given up believing it existed, you gave me a real family.

You showed me the one thing all my money never could.