I only looked at the second envelope, the smaller one, unsealed, resting beside the first.

“And that one?” I asked.

Hollis’s spotted hand hesitated over it, as though it were heavier than paper had any right to be.

Chapter 15 — The Letter

“This,” Hollis said, “is a personal letter.

Your father wrote it three weeks before his heart gave out.

It is addressed to both of you, and his instructions were explicit: it was to be read aloud, in this room, in the presence of his attorney, only when the trust’s two conditions had been met.

I have carried it for six years waiting for this day.