“What?”
“I offered to fund your research.”
I stared at her.
“No. You didn’t.”
“I wrote to you three times.”
My father closed his eyes.
Grandma slid the letter toward me.
I recognized her handwriting immediately.
She had offered to provide laboratory space, introduce me to her company’s research team, and finance further development.
My hands started trembling.
“I never received this.”
“I know.”
I looked at my father.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Grandma continued.
“Your father intercepted my letters. He told me you had declined my offer.”
My mother whispered, “Richard was only trying to keep the family together.”
Grandma turned toward her.
“By misleading his own son?”
My father suddenly pressed his palm firmly against the table.
“He was supposed to join my business!”
I stepped back.
Fifteen years.
For fifteen years, I had believed Grandma considered my ambitions unrealistic.
I had struggled through rejected applications, temporary jobs, and projects that never received proper funding.
And all that time, she had been willing to help me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her.
Her eyes filled with regret.
“I believed your father when he said you wanted no contact with the family. By the time I discovered the truth, you had already established your own life.”
“That didn’t mean you couldn’t tell me.”
“I know.”
For the first time that evening, Grandma looked old.
“I made a terrible mistake, Daniel. I thought keeping the peace was more important than confronting the truth.”
My father started arguing again.
But I barely heard him.
I was staring at the letter.
Then I noticed something written at the bottom.
A name. A name I hadn’t expected to see.
Nora Bennett.
My wife’s name.
“Nora?” I whispered.
Grandma watched me carefully.
I looked up.
“Why is my wife’s name on this letter?”
Nobody answered.
My wife, Nora, had died three years earlier.
She had been thirty-four.
A sudden brain hemorrhage had taken her from us before I could even understand what was happening.
One morning, she was making pancakes with Lily.
