“He’s alive?”
Thomas laughed softly.
“Very.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a surgeon.”
I sat down.
“What kind?”
“Pediatric oncology.”
Of course.
Some circles close quietly.
“He wants to meet you.”
“No.”
“Margaret.”
“I’m seventy. I am not attending a ceremony where someone tells me I’m a hero because I donated blood.”
“He specifically said not to call you a hero.”
I paused.
“He did?”
“Yes.”
“What does he want?”
“To tell you what happened to his mother’s papers.”
“What papers?”
Thomas became quiet.
“Records concerning the original caregiver fund.”
“What about them?”
“There’s something unusual.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“Your name was not the only name Jane Harrington put into the original documents.”
I frowned.
“Whose else?”
“A child.”
“I didn’t have a child in 1984.”
“I know.”
“Then whose?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Amy’s.”
My daughter.
Ellie’s mother.
The woman we lost three years ago.
I stopped breathing.
“That’s impossible.”
“Amy was born in 1986.”
“Yes.”
“The amendment was made in 1987.”
I gripped the phone.
“Why would Jane Harrington put my daughter’s name in a trust?”
“That’s what Benjamin wants to explain.”
“Did Rose know?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she write that in the letter?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked toward Ellie coloring at the table.
“What exactly does the amendment say?”
Thomas exhaled.
“That if anything happened to you, the education portion of the fund would pass to Amy.”
“And if something happened to Amy?”
A long silence.
“Margaret…”
My heart began pounding.
“Say it.”
“It passes to Amy’s child.”
Ellie.
I stared at my granddaughter.
She looked up.
“Grandma?”
I could not answer.
Because suddenly the ring had led us not only to Rose.
Not only to a forgotten trust.
It had led us to something my daughter apparently knew about.
Something she had never told me.
And the next question frightened me more than any amount of money ever could.
Why had Amy kept it secret too?
-END OF PART 2 –PRESS NEX PART IN BOTTOM OF PAGE TO READ NEXT PART
PART 3
I did not tell Ellie.
Not that night.
She was seven.
Seven-year-olds deserve truth.
They do not deserve adult uncertainty dropped into their laps simply because grown-ups are impatient.
So when she asked why I looked strange, I said:
“I heard something about your mommy.”
Her eyes widened.
“Good something?”
“I think so.”
