But I knew his face.
It was my father.
Thomas Avery.
The man my mother had told me died in a car accident when I was six months old.
Written across the bottom of the photograph in faded blue ink were five words.
VALE & AVERY — FIRST OFFICE, 1984.
I looked at Samuel.
“My father knew Richard?”
No one laughed now.
Samuel leaned back slowly.
“Your father didn’t simply know Richard.”
He paused.
“Your father founded the company with him.”
I had married Richard Vale because I was afraid of being poor.
That is the ugliest version of the truth.
It is also the simplest.
At thirty-two, I had accumulated forty-eight thousand dollars in debt.
Some of it was mine.
Most of it wasn’t.
My mother had spent four years dying slowly.
Kidney failure first.
Then complications.
Then surgery.
Then another surgery.
Insurance covered enough to keep us hopeful and not enough to keep us solvent.
