“Why?”

April was worse than a three-year-old. What was I supposed to say? I wanted to bang my head on the dashboard, but I managed to restrain myself. I understood her curiosity. There were things about my parents I’d never know and damn few people left to ask. “Possibly because your father wasn’t Catholic and she didn’t want him to know she was giving you items of religious significance. This is just a guess.”

“So you’re saying she did it behind his back?”

“You could look at it that way.”

“That doesn’t sound like a loving relationship.”

“Doesn’t to me, either, but marriages come in all shapes and sizes. Some work and some don’t.”

“How did you end up with this?”

“It’s a long story and really not that important.”

“It is to me.”

I was reluctant to go into it, but avoiding an explanation would only create more questions. “I came across it when I was going through the personal effects of a friend who died. He had this box of old files that should have gone to a shredding company years ago. I went through to see if there were documents I should pull before the contents were destroyed.”

“Did your friend know my mother?”

Despairingly, I said, “Honestly, April, I wasn’t prepared for all these questions. I expected to hand this over and let you make of it what you would.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to put you on the spot.”

“I don’t blame you for asking. I’m just trying to tell you why I’m doing such a poor job. Your dad’s the one you should talk to about this.”

“I can’t. He won’t talk about her. It upsets him. When I was a kid, I’d sometimes ask, but I learned it was better to keep quiet. There are issues I stay away from. Things that set him off. Certain holidays—Easter in particular. The subject of his mom. Mothers in general. Sometimes women in general.”

That was a topic I wanted to avoid myself lest I end up badmouthing the guy to his only child. On impulse, I said, “Did you ever meet a man named Peter Wolinsky?”

That caught her off guard. “He came to see me months ago. Is he the one who died?”

“He is. That was the end of August.”

“Oh, well now I feel bad. I liked him. He seemed like such a kind man.”

“He was kind.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed in a robbery attempt.”

“That is so sad. I used to run into him in the oddest places.”

“That’s because he was watching over you.”

She looked at me. “I can’t believe you said that. I remember thinking he was like my personal guardian angel, but I thought I was imagining it.”

“Well, you weren’t.”

“Why would he watch over me?”

“I know bits and pieces of the story. I don’t know everything. He felt protective.”

“Fair enough, I guess. So now I don’t understand what he was doing with the envelope.”