My father had bought the estate when I was fourteen. I remembered him standing near the old stone wall with his hands in his coat pockets.
One day, this will all be yours.
At fourteen, I had thought he meant the house.
At forty-one, I realized he had meant something larger.
Expectation.
Responsibility.
The exhausting inheritance of becoming him.
Now I wondered what else he had left behind.
When I returned inside, Clara was arranging flowers in the front hall.
Not because anyone had asked her.
Because one of the lilies had wilted.
She removed it carefully from the vase.
I stopped several feet away.
“Do you still have the letters?”
Her hands froze.
“Yes.”
“I want to see them.”
She looked at me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“They were written by my father.”
“To my mother.”
“He was also my father.”
“Yes.”
The calmness of her answer irritated me.
