***First, happy birthday.***

*”Second, I owe you the truth, or at least enough of it for you to decide whether you want more.”*

*”Please go to Merrick and Rowe on Fulton Street and ask for the envelope left in your name. They have been instructed to give it to you once you become an adult.”*

*”You do not know me the way you think you might. But I knew someone who loved you very much.”*

*”I hope, in some small way, these birthdays helped you feel remembered.”*

*”Take care, son.”*

***Thomas.***

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

***”Take care, son.”***

Adrian had noticed those words too.

“You see why I thought of my dad, right?”

Of course I did.

A man’s full name.

A letter waiting at a law office.

A secret stretching across eighteen birthdays.

It sounded exactly like something an absent father might do when he wanted redemption without having done any of the parenting.

Something bitter rose in me.

“He’s got a lot of nerve,” I said.