Chapter 13: The Envelope

Mom sat at Dustin's kitchen table in her camel coat and would not take it off.

Dustin put a mug of tea in front of her, and she held it without drinking.

I sat across from her.

Brynn slept on the sofa in the next room, still in her coat, with the door open a hand's width.

"Caleb is at a dinner in the city until one," Mom said. "Edmund thinks I'm asleep. I told the driver I was going to church."

"At midnight?" I said.

"It was the only lie I could think of."

She almost smiled, and then her face broke.

"Erin, I'm so sorry. I've been trying to say it since the first night."

She put the cream envelope on the table and slid it to me with two fingers.

"Open it, please. Before I lose my nerve again."

Inside was a thin bank book with my full name on the front: Erin Odell Kessling.

Under it lay a letter on heavy paper, with a lawyer's signature at the bottom.

I read the first page twice.

On the day the DNA test came back, my parents had opened an account in my name.

They had put two million dollars into it.

The second page said thirty thousand more would arrive on the first of every month, for as long as I lived.

The third page said one third of the Kessling family trust was mine.

The date on every page was a month old.

I looked up.

"This has been mine for a month."

"Since the day we found you," Mom whispered.

"Nobody told me."