“Clara said it was for the best,” Grandma Ruth whispered, her voice cracking as she looked toward the house. “She said you boys didn’t need to grow up knowing your mother died like that. She said it would make you feel safer to think she was just gone.”
“Safer?” I asked, my voice rising. “To think our own mother didn’t want us?”
Grandma Ruth took off her yellow gloves and squeezed them between her hands. “Elena loved you boys more than her own breath. She wanted to make sure you were looked after.”
“What happened to her savings, Grandma?” Noah asked.
She looked at Noah, then at me, her eyes watery and small behind her thick lenses.
“I can’t say,” she whispered, turning her back to us to pick up her plastic bucket. “Clara handled the paperwork with the court. You have to ask Clara.”
“Clara won’t tell us the truth,” I said.
