"His family has money," Diane said.
"Old money.
They have people who find things out.
About two years ago, someone started asking questions in your neighborhood.
A man.
He said he was doing a survey.
One of your neighbors mentioned it to me — I'd given her my number years ago, just in case."
"Just in case," I repeated.
"I should have come sooner.
I know that."
"What does he want?"
Diane hesitated.
"His father d*ed eight months ago," she said.
"There's an estate.
Significant.
And apparently the will has conditions." She paused.
"Carter never married.
He has no other children."
The ground felt different under my feet.
"He wants my grandson."
Diane didn't deny it.
"He wants to establish paternity.
Legally."
The car door opened behind me.
My grandson's sneakers hit the gravel path.
"Grandma, I found it." He held up the card, slightly bent at one corner.
"Can we put it by the flowers?"
I turned around.
I looked at his face — his dark eyes, the way he tilted his head exactly the way his mother used to.
"Of course we can, sweetheart."
He walked past me toward the headstone, completely trusting, completely safe in the only world he had ever known.
I looked back at Diane.
I didn't sleep that night.
I lay in the dark listening to my grandson breathe through the baby monitor I still kept on my nightstand — he was ten, too old for it, but I had never been able to turn it off.
After what Diane had told me, I was glad I hadn't.
In the morning I made his pancakes.
I watched him eat.
He talked about baseball practice and a boy at school who kept stealing the good batting helmet, and I nodded in the right places and refilled his orange juice and didn't say a word about any of it.
After he left for school, I sat down at the kitchen table with the letter and read it again.
Then I picked up the phone and called my neighbor Patricia.
"The man doing the survey," I said.
"The one you mentioned to Diane.
Do you remember when that was?"
"Oh, let me think.
Spring, I'd say.
Maybe April?
He had a clipboard.
