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Believe in yourself, and if that’s not enough, then believe that this is what my Gramps wanted for you.
I hope you make the right choice…Coach.
Yours,
Delaney.
I can hardly liftmy eyes up from the page—by now, I must've read Delaney’s letter so many times that I no longer have any concept of it.
It’s Alf’s voice that snaps me back into reality. “Twenty minutes.” He peers down at his watch. “Took me thirty to process it.”
I meet him with a blank, vacant stare. It’s all I can do at this point as he stands up from his chair and places a firm hand on my shoulder.
“Here.” He shell shocks me as he hands me an exact replica of the bracelet I’d snapped off and had been desperate to try and repair ever since.
“Where did you…when did you…”
“You have Wilks to thank for that.” Alf flashes a faint smile before he removes his hand from my shoulder. “Go catch your flight, Park,” he speaks, tossing my passport into my lap—one he’d seemingly found while I was reading the letter. “Bring our girl home.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
D E L A N E Y
“Delaney,be a doll and hand me the mashed potatoes.”
Mom eagerly commands my attention—given that I’ve been sitting in a complete and total daze since the second I arrived at my parents for our annual Matthew’s Thanksgiving.
I lean across the table—one that's filled with enough food to feed an army and reach for the bowl of mashed potatoes, handing it over to my mom.
“Oh, and don’t forget the stuffing.” She gestures once more, taking the bowl from my grasp without muttering so much as a “thank you.”
I suppress the urge to suck in a breath of annoyance and do as she asks, handing her the stuffing and resettling in my armchair. I have no appetite—not just when it comes to the food, but to be here a second longer.
“Isn’t this great?” Dad asks rhetorically as he eagerly sits at the head of the table, gesturing theatrically with his arms. “What a perfect way to finish up the week—Grandpa’s house is cleared, the team is sold, and we’re all together again.” He counts on his fingers. “What more could we ask for on Thanksgiving? Am I right?”
This time, it almost pains me not to roll my eyes as I make note of the order in which he described this “perfect week.” Of course, referring to our family'sdelightfultogetherness as last because, in his mind, it is.
I’m only here because I have to be—not because I want to be. Besides, I’m exhausted. I hardly got any sleep last night, given that I stayed up for most of it staring at both my laptop and phone screen with such intensity that I’m positive I’ve burned my cornea.
I couldn’t help it.
After Mr. Cunningham faxed over the letter to Crawfield, I’ve been desperately praying that Warren would respond or (at the bare minimum) acknowledge it. Except now, it’s been almost 24 hours of complete radio silence.
It’s killing me.
It came as a massive shock when Mr. Cunningham revealed the truth behind my share of Gramps' inheritance: since the day I was born, Gramps had set aside allocated funds for me each and every year.
Yet, unlike how he supposedly did for my cousins, placing their accounts under their legal birth name, the confusion with processing my account was the name in which Gramps placed it under:
The Sunshine Fund.
Apparently, it took the lawyers some deep digging, but they were able to come to the conclusion that not only was “sunshine" a code name for me—but that this account had significantly more than any other relative.
After 25 years of fruitful deposits, at the time of his passing, the account had a net worth of over ten million dollars, all set aside for me.
Yet, the part that’s still the hardest to digest—the note that Gramps left behind with it.
Bring the sunshine into others' lives like you always did for me.
