She saved my justice past the age when most women let the world’s debts go unpaid, and she never breathed a word of it to a living soul.

Chapter 12 — A Twenty-Year War

I sat in that quiet glass office with the letter in my lap and cried the way you cry when a picture you’ve carried your whole life turns over and shows you its other side.

For as long as I could remember, I had thought of Mama as the soft one.

The one who let Delroy run the money and make the decisions and speak for the family.

The one who cried at the kitchen table and didn’t fight.