My name was written across the front in her handwriting.
**Linda.**
Not Russell.
Not “my children.”
Just me.
My hands began shaking.
Russell walked into the kitchen and froze when he saw the money.
“What is that?”
“I found it in Mama’s flour tin.”
He stared at the bills.
Then at the envelope.
“Probably grocery money she forgot about.”
Eventually, we counted it.
$18,940.
Hardly forgotten grocery money.
I opened the envelope before Russell could say anything else.
Inside were three handwritten pages.
The first sentence stopped me cold.
**I’m sorry, Linda.**
Then came the next line.
**I should have told you what Wayne did with your settlement.**
I collapsed into Mama’s usual kitchen chair.
Suddenly I was seventeen again.
That was the year a delivery truck backed into me outside a grocery store.
My leg was broken in two places.
Three ribs were cracked.
I suffered a concussion and missed weeks of school.
For months, I walked with a limp.
The trucking company’s insurance eventually offered a settlement.
My stepfather, Wayne, handled everything.
He told Mama and me that the settlement was $42,000.
Most of it, he claimed, had gone toward medical expenses.
Whatever remained was supposedly placed into an account for me until I turned eighteen.
But when my eighteenth birthday arrived, Wayne told me there was nothing left.
Unexpected expenses had consumed the account.
He even showed me paperwork that looked official.
I was eighteen.
I didn’t understand insurance settlements, legal documents, or financial records.
I cried.
Then I got a job at a hardware store and moved on with my life.
Mama cried too.
For years, I thought she had cried because she felt sorry for me.
Sitting in her kitchen decades later, I realized the truth.
She had been crying because she was ashamed.
Behind me, Russell spoke quietly.
Continue reading on the next page →
