I noticed the letters. Grandma wrote them by hand at the small desk in her bedroom, then slid them into a locked drawer the moment I knocked.
She took private phone calls too, lowering her voice the second I crossed the hallway.
That was the closest we came to conversation most nights.
One evening I paused outside her door, a tray of soup in my hands.
“She must never know,” Grandma was saying. “Not yet. Promise me.”
I stepped back, my pulse loud in my ears.
When I brought the tray in, she smiled the smallest smile I had ever seen on her face.
“Sit with me,” she said.
I sat. She did not speak again for an hour.
“She must never know.”
At night I lay awake asking myself the same question over and over. Was I here because I loved her, or because she had promised me everything?
The answer kept changing depending on the hour.
Some days, when she gripped my hand during a coughing fit, I knew I would have stayed without the promise.
Other days, when she criticized the way I sliced bread or dressed, I felt my own bitterness rise.
The answer kept changing depending on the hour.
“You waste too much,” she snapped one afternoon. “You never learned the value of money.”
“I worked two jobs through college, Grandma. I think I learned.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
