I never had children of my own, so more than twenty years ago, when I spotted a thin little boy sitting by himself across the street from my house, I couldn't just pretend I hadn't seen him.

"He contacted you?" I said.

"Why?"

"Because he's scared," Dylan said.

"He's been holding that property in his name for over twenty years.

He knows the account exists.

He knows what's in it.

And now that your husband is g*ne, he's not sure what his legal exposure looks like."

"He should be scared."

"He is." Dylan reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and set a folded piece of paper on the table between us.

"He sent me this.

A letter.

He wants to meet."

I didn't touch it.

"He wants to meet with me?"

"With both of us.

He says he has information he never shared with your husband.

He says there are things about the arrangement he wants to explain in person."

"Or he wants to assess how much I know before deciding what to do next."

Dylan looked at me steadily.

"That's also possible," he said.

I picked up the letter.

Raymond Holt's handwriting was small and cramped, nothing like the careful formality of Carol Merritt's letter.

He wrote the way a man writes when he is in a hurry or when he is afraid — short sentences, words crossed out and rewritten, the pen pressing hard enough to mark the page beneath.

*I am not the villain in this story.

I want you to know that before anything else.

I did what my brother asked because he was my brother and I owed him and I didn't understand at the time what it would cost anyone.

I understand now.

I have understood for a long time.

I want to make it right if that is still possible.*

I set the letter down.

"He says he's not the villain," I said.

"People who hold two hundred and thirty thousand dollars of someone else's money for twenty years often feel that way," Dylan said.

"What do you think?

You're the attorney."

"I think his exposure is real and he knows it.

I think meeting him could be useful.

I also think you have every right to skip the meeting entirely and go straight to a formal claim." He paused.

"But I think he might tell you things about your husband that no document will."

I looked at the letter again.

*I didn't understand at the time what it would cost anyone.*

"Set up the meeting," I said.

Dylan nodded once.

"There's something else you should know before you see him," he said.

I waited.

"Raymond has a daughter.

She's thirty-four.

Her name is Nora." He stopped.

"Your husband paid for her education.

Private school.

Then university.

He sent money every year, consistently, from the same hidden account."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"He paid for her education," I said.

"Yes."

"While telling me we couldn't afford to keep feeding the boy next door."

Dylan said nothing.

There was nothing to say.

I stood up from the table and walked to the window again.

The bird feeder was empty.

It had been empty for three years, since before my husband passed, because somewhere in the last years of his life he had stopped pretending to care about the things we had built together.

I had refilled it out of habit for a while after he was g*ne.

Then I had stopped too.

"Nora," I said.

"Does she know where the money came from?"

"I don't know," Dylan said.

"That's one of the things Raymond may be able to answer."

I turned around.

"And Paulette?

The woman in the photograph?

Does she know he's g*ne?"

"Yes.

She was informed by Raymond when it happened."

"Was she at the funeral?"

Dylan hesitated.

"I don't know," he said carefully.

I thought about the funeral.

The small gathering.

The neighbors who came out of politeness.

The distant relatives who had sent cards instead.

I had stood at the front of the room and accepted condolences from people I barely knew, and I had felt — I remembered this clearly — mostly numb.

Mostly tired.

Mostly relieved, in a way I had been ashamed of at the time.

I was less ashamed of it now.

"When can you arrange the meeting with Raymond?" I asked.

"As soon as you want."

"This week," I said.

"I don't want to wait."

Dylan reached for his water glass.

"I'll call him today," he said.

He took a long drink.

Set the glass down.

And then, quietly, without making it into anything larger than it was, he said: "Mrs.

Holland.

I'm sorry it took me so long to come back."

I looked at him across the kitchen table.

"You came back," I said.

"That's what matters."

He nodded.

But his jaw tightened slightly, and I could see that he didn't entirely believe me — or didn't entirely forgive himself — and that was a conversation for another time.

His phone lit up on the table between us.

He glanced at the screen and went still.

"What is it?" I asked.

He turned the phone so I could see it.

A text message.