Inside were the things I had never been allowed to show him — the documents that had existed for a decade, that could have changed everything at any point in those ten years if a single person in his family had been willing to look.

A certified paternity report for all five children.

A copy of the hotel folio from the night everything ended.

And the notarized statement that Felicia had believed was gone forever.

I looked, for a moment, at Theodore’s grave — the real reason I had come, the kind old man in the box who had wanted, at the end, only the truth — and then I looked back at the man who had let a lie throw me out of my own life.

I lifted the envelope into the air between us.