Chapter 15 — The Letter

My dearest Mabel, it began.

If you are reading this, then I have finally gone to my rest, and I am beside my husband again at last, where I have wanted to be for a very long time.

Do not grieve too hard for that part.

It is the one piece of all this that I am glad of.

For years now, my own children have believed that I had nothing left in this world — that after the farm failed and the land was sold, I was a poor old woman living on their pity, a burden to be managed and passed around.

I let them believe it.