“Yes.”
Inside were old papers.
Bank documents.
Copies of financial statements.
Letters signed by my father.
And an envelope with my name on it.
My hands were shaking when I opened it.
My father had written that if I was ever reading the letter, then something had prevented him from explaining everything to me himself.
He also wrote that if anything uvr happened to him, certain documents were to be kept safe until I turned twenty-five.
“Why twenty-five?”
Linda handed me another document.
It was a trust fund.
In my name.
It turned out that years earlier, my father had set aside part of the money from the sale of his business for me.
But after his death, a large portion of that money had disappeared.
And for a period of time, Richard had been involved in managing those accounts.
I sat down.
The money suddenly felt secondary.
One question was eating away at me.
“If you had all of this, why didn’t you just come to me?”
Linda remained silent.
“Why Tinder?”
She looked at me.
“I found you on social media about a year ago. I knew your twenty-fifth birthday was approaching. Then I saw your Tinder profile.”
“So you decided to go on a date with me?”
“At first, I only wanted to make sure it was really you.”
“And then?”
“Then I thought we’d meet once, and I would tell you everything.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t.”
I paced angrily across the room.
“Six months, Linda. You had a chance to tell me every single day for six months.”
She was crying now.
“I know.”
“I told you about my mother. About my father. I told you how little I knew about his death. And you sat there listening while knowing all of this.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
She was silent for a long moment.
“Because at first, I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”
Then she took a breath.
“But after a few weeks, I became afraid of something else.”
“What?”
“That if I told you the truth, I would lose you.”
I stared at her.
She continued.
“I searched for you because of a promise connected to your father. But I stayed with you for a different reason.”
After those words, I felt completely torn.
I had loved this woman.
But now I didn’t know which parts of our relationship had been real and which had been planned from the beginning.
Linda reached beneath the papers in the metal box and pulled out another envelope.
Written across the front were the words:
For Jason. Only when he’s ready to know everything.
I opened it.
Inside was my father’s final letter.
Near the end was one sentence I couldn’t stop thinking about.
My father had written:
If you ever discover that someone who came into your life made a mistake, first listen to why they made it. A person’s mistake at the beginning does not always define who they become in the end.
I looked at Linda.
I didn’t know whether my father had somehow been referring specifically to her or whether it was simply advice about life.
But I didn’t see her for the next several weeks.
I took the documents to a lawyer.
Some of them were verified.
A lengthy legal process began.
