that nearly pulled me backward.
“Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
I stared at him.
My mother had died twelve years earlier.
And suddenly I remembered the box of papers she’d left me.
The one Dad had begged me never to open.
That night, I opened my mother’s box.
Inside were old statements and a letter addressed to me.
Her handwriting shook me before I read a word.
Emily,
If your father ever makes you feel responsible for keeping this family together, remember that you are my daughter, not
