The gate clicked shut with a heavy clang that echoed across the valley. Brittany spun around, her smile gone, while her parents stood frozen beside the SUV. “Open it right now,” she shouted. I kept rocking and said nothing. Then I heard tires on gravel, and a dark green truck rolled up the woods road and stopped just inside the gate.

A tall man in a tweed jacket climbed out carrying a worn leather folder, and Evan stepped out of the passenger side behind him, pale and silent. “Mrs. Dalton,” the man said, “I am Calvin Hollis, your husband’s attorney. Walter asked me to be here the day this gate closed.” Brittany’s mother gasped. Hollis opened the folder and added, “There is a second letter, and it is addressed to all of you.”