N.C.
Inside the lid, in my grandmother’s handwriting, were the words:
For Noah, who will always find his way.
Noah ran his thumb over the letters again and again.
“She gave this to Grandma?” he asked.
“She left it for you,” Evelyn said.
“Why didn’t Grandma give it to me?”
There it was.
The question no adult in the room could soften.
Emma looked up too.
I took a slow breath. “Because Grandma Margaret made a wrong choice.”
Noah’s jaw tightened. “Because she doesn’t like us.”
I moved toward him, but he stepped back, not in rejection, just in the sudden fury of a child who has discovered sadness has a name.
“Why?” he demanded. “What did we do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
“That’s what grown-ups say when they don’t want to tell you.”
He was right.
I knelt in front of him.
