He brought me upstairs, into the penthouse, into the six-floor view he’d had all along. We read to each other in the evenings. We watched the sun go down from his balcony more times than I could count, and every single time, he reached for my hand before it finished setting.
When he died, I was still holding it.
At the funeral, his children stood on the other side of the grave and didn’t speak to me once. I caught them whispering. I caught Celia’s eyes moving over my coat, my shoes, doing arithmetic.
A week later, I was sitting across from his lawyer, staring at an envelope with my name in a dead man’s handwriting, and being told to sit down before I opened it.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A confession,” Mr. Grant said. “And instructions. I’d read it now, if I were you. His children have filed for an emergency injunction. They’ll be here with it by five o’clock.”
I broke the wax.
The Photograph
Two things were inside. A folded letter in Walter’s hand, and a photograph so old its corners had gone soft as cloth.
The photograph came first, and it made no sense.
It showed a much younger Walter — thirty, maybe — standing outside a municipal building somewhere with brick the color of rust. A dark-haired woman stood beside him. A little girl, no older than three, stood in front of them both in a yellow raincoat, clutching a small red doll against her chest.
