My Stepfather Raised Five Children Who Weren’t His — After the Funeral, We Each Received a Letter Never Intended for the Others to Read

Mr. Elwood’s office smelled like coffee, aged paper, and men who organize grief alphabetically for a living.

A small locked wooden box rested on his desk. He handed the key to me, explaining that Thomas had specifically requested I be the one to open it. The soft metallic click sounded much louder than it should have. Inside were five envelopes, one for each of us, all labeled in Thomas’s shaky handwriting from his final years.

We moved to separate corners of the office or turned our chairs away from each other, as if privacy still mattered.

I opened mine.

“My sweet girl,” the first sentence read, “Susan left because she discovered something about me the rest of you never knew.”

I stopped breathing.

Then I kept reading.