“You need to be sitting up for this.”
I pulled the blanket up around my shoulders.
“I promised him,” she whispered. “It’s time you knew the truth about what was going on between us.”
Grace set the wooden box on the bed in my reach.
“Open it,” she said. “I promised him I wouldn’t say a word until you saw everything for yourself.”
I lifted the lid.
“It’s time you knew the truth.”
Inside lay a bundle of yellowed letters tied with a faded ribbon.
And a small stack of photographs curled at the corners.
The top photo was not of David.
It was of his father, dead now for years.
He was standing beside a young woman I had never seen.
“Who is this woman?” I asked.
He was standing beside a young woman.
“My mother,” Grace whispered.
I flipped the picture over.
A date was written in David’s father’s handwriting, and beneath it, a single word.
