Cover

Epigraph

What would you do if your secrets were revealed to those around you?

One

Eighty-eight years of life reduced to a vintage, cracked briefcase sat before Daniel Whiteley. Gramps used to joke he loved this briefcase because it matched his complexion—weathered and beaten, knocked around at the edges. A survivor.

But now Gramps was gone.

The dusty leather contained not his soul but his meager possessions, entombed by rust-seized locks in an arthritic grip. Daniel stared at what remained of his grandfather and sipped at his watery, soulless coffee.

His mother wiped away a tear. “He was adamant I give it to you straight after the funeral.”

As if he were the only thing holding her up, she dissolved into Daniel’s embrace, and he raised his Styrofoam cup as she stifled a sob into his chest. Then she stepped back, pressing the creases from her shapeless black dress to distract another wave of emotion. “You spoke so well. He would have been proud of you.”

“It was important I got it right.” So important he’d worn a tie for the first time in years. He wouldn’t let down his hero.

He clasped the briefcase handle and lifted it, feeling an unexpected weight.

“You look so much like him.” Emotion swallowed his mother’s sentence, and she dabbed at her eyes with a sodden handkerchief. “Where’s Kelly?”

“Had to go back to work.”

The tiniest frown tugged at the corner of her mouth. “How is Milly after the funeral?”

Daniel looked over his mother’s head to the top of his daughter’s, her gaze buried in her phone. She fidgeted on the last plastic chair in the row against the wall of the tiny room of the funeral home that only thirty minutes earlier had been half filled with people who had gathered to bid farewell to Gramps.

“She’s quiet, but that’s just a normal grief reaction.” But he knew it was more than that. Milly was becoming a puzzle not even his master’s degree in counseling could solve. She was twelve years old now, a time of life when a father’s pride and dread should emerge in equal measure. The testing of boundaries for independence. A whole universe of dribbling, hormone-infected boys. Exploring the edges of the fun the world had to offer. But instead his daughter was growing quieter by the day.

“And Kelly?”

“It’s hard to say. She’s sad about Gramps, but she won’t accept my help to work through anything she’s dealing with.”

“Is that why you aren’t taking the rest of the day off to spend with your family?”

“Three of my afternoon appointments are new couples, so no. Thanks for looking after Milly.”

His mother reached up, a familiar stroke of his cheek. “I’m so proud of what you’ve achieved, especially with your book.”