“Why didn’t you tell me about the trust?”
“Your grandmother asked me not to until your twenty-fifth birthday.”
“Why?”
Grandpa hesitated.
And I immediately knew there was more.
Something worse.
“There’s another document,” he said.
Mom went completely still.
Grandpa reached into the envelope.
He pulled out a handwritten letter.
The paper was yellowed around the edges.
My name was written across the front.
Amelia.
In Grandma’s handwriting.
My hands trembled as I opened it.
My grandmother had died when I was twelve.
I remembered her perfume.
Her garden.
The peppermint candies in her purse.
How she used to brush my hair and tell me I had “old eyes.”
The letter began:
*My darling Amelia, if you are reading this, then Walter has decided you are ready for a truth I was too afraid to tell you while I was alive.*
I stopped breathing.
I looked toward Grandpa.
He nodded.
Keep reading.
The next lines didn’t make sense.
Until suddenly, they made far too much sense.
I read them twice.
“No.”
Mom covered her mouth.
Ava whispered, “What does it say?”
I couldn’t speak.
Grandpa answered.
“Amelia is not your sister.”
Ava frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
Grandpa looked at me.
Then at Mom.
“Amelia is your aunt.”
The world vanished.
I laughed once.
A short, broken sound.
“That’s impossible.”
Grandpa’s eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
He pointed to Grandma’s photograph.
“Your grandmother had another daughter.”
