That email became part of the evidence file. But there was more. Another message, this one from my father directly to my mother, sent about six months earlier, buried further back in the timeline than any of us had initially looked.
Once Mom gets used to giving us money, she’ll stop questioning it.
My mother had replied simply, I hope so.
Grandma read both messages in Mr. Grant’s office, sitting perfectly still at the conference table, her reading glasses perched low on her nose. She didn’t cry. That surprised me more than almost anything else in the entire ordeal. She simply closed her eyes for a long moment.
After a while, she said, quietly, “I loved them.”
Mr. Grant nodded. “I know.”
“I raised them.”
“I know.”
“They were my babies.”
“I know.”
She opened her eyes finally. “And they still chose this.”
Nobody answered, because there was genuinely nothing left to say to that.
