He had let me carry it in my own leg.

I sat in that office and felt something toward my brother that I had never felt before and have not entirely put down since.

Chapter 10 — The Escrow Account

She slid an official statement across the desk.

The escrow account, she explained, had been fed for twenty years by the rent that building threw off, and by the value Delroy signed away, all of it held in trust to pass to me the day Mama died.

I asked how it was possible — how a woman like my mother, who let Delroy sign every paper in their life together, had managed any of it.