Somewhere in her, all that time, had lived the certainty that the truth would eventually reach me, and the care to arrange the reaching.

I kept one hand on the tin at every stop sign, the way you’d steady a sleeping child.

At five-oh-five that afternoon I walked through the doors of First County with the old flour tin under my arm, flour dust still clinging to my funeral clothes.

The teller knew my family’s name.

I told her Mama had passed and that I’d found something among her things I didn’t understand.

She typed something into her computer, and I watched the color go out of her face.