PART 5 — ALAN’S LAST PROMISE
“Mom… according to this, my father is Thomas Ellis.”
I heard the words.
But my mind refused to accept them.
Thomas.
My brother.
The man my family had buried without burying.
The man who had stood outside Beth’s house less than an hour earlier.
“No,” I whispered.
Rebecca reached for my arm.
Beth was crying through the phone.
“Mom, it says there’s a 99.8 percent probability.”
“Do not touch anything else.”
“What?”
“Beth, listen to me. Put the report down. Let the police photograph everything.”
“Mom—”
“I’m coming.”
I hung up.
Rebecca grabbed her purse.
Denise stood.
“I’m coming too.”
“No.”
She stared at me.
“You have already been dragged far enough into my family.”
Denise shook her head.
“Margaret, Alan spent seven Thursdays sitting in my office because he was terrified you would have to face this alone.”
That silenced me.
She picked up her coat.
“So you’re not facing it alone.”
Twenty-six minutes later, we pulled onto Beth’s street.
Two police cruisers were parked outside.
The green lockbox sat on Beth’s dining table surrounded by evidence bags.
Beth ran toward me the moment I entered.
I held her.
For several seconds neither of us spoke.
She was forty years old.
But in my arms, she was suddenly seven again.
The little girl Alan had apparently moved across town to protect.
“Mom,” she whispered against my shoulder, “what is happening?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the first completely honest answer anyone in our family had given in decades.
A detective named Ramirez approached.
“Mrs. Harlan?”
“Yes.”
“Your daughter says you may recognize some of these documents.”
“I recognize too many of them.”
He glanced toward Rebecca and Denise.
“And these women?”
“Family.”
Rebecca looked at me.
I had not meant to say it.
But I did not take it back.
Detective Ramirez pointed to the DNA report.
“We’re treating everything as evidence because of the break-in.”
“Good.”
“There’s another issue.”
Of course there was.
“What?”
“The report is seventeen years old.”
I frowned.
Beth turned.
“What?”
Ramirez put on gloves and lifted the plastic sleeve.
“Testing date: October 2009.”
I stared at it.
Alan had known since 2009.
Sixteen years before he died.
I felt another layer of anger rising.
Then Ramirez said, “But the laboratory listed here closed in 2007.”
Everyone went silent.
I looked at him.
“Before the test was supposedly performed?”
“Two years before.”
Beth stopped crying.
“What does that mean?”
Ramirez answered carefully.
“It means I would not assume this report is genuine.”
Hope was dangerous.
I had learned that.
But something inside my chest loosened anyway.
Rebecca stepped closer.
“Could someone fabricate a DNA report?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That is what we need to determine.”
I stared at Thomas’s name.
Then remembered Alan’s tape.
I never doubted you.
The donor was someone connected to Graystone.
Maybe even Alan had believed a lie.
Or maybe he had discovered the truth after recording those words.
“Was there anything else hidden in the box?” I asked.
Beth pointed toward a stack of envelopes.
“Dad labeled everything.”
Of course he did.
Even while uncovering a decades-long conspiracy, Alan Harlan apparently remained committed to office supplies.
There were six envelopes.
PROPERTY.
BETH.
REBECCA.
ST. CATHERINE’S.
GRAYSTONE.
And one that simply said:
MARGARET — LAST.
My fingers stopped over it.
Beth saw my face.
“Mom?”
“Not yet.”
I reached for BETH.
Inside were copies of medical records and two DNA reports.
The first was the one identifying Thomas.
The second came from a laboratory in Virginia.
It had been completed six months before Alan died.
I read the conclusion.
Then read it again.
Thomas Ellis excluded as biological father.
Beth grabbed my shoulder.
“What?”
I handed it to her.
Her knees nearly buckled.
Rebecca caught her.
“I’m not his daughter?”
“No.”
Beth began crying again.
This time from relief.
So did I.
For one terrible hour, I had believed something had been done to my body so monstrous I could barely give it a name.
But the mystery remained.
If Thomas was not Beth’s father, who was?
Beth flipped to the next page.
There was another result.
ALAN HARLAN — EXCLUDED.
Her face crumpled.
I touched her cheek.
“Sweetheart.”
She looked at me.
“He really wasn’t my biological father.”
“No.”
That truth hurt.
But not in the way I expected.
Because immediately another truth stood beside it.
Alan had taught Beth to ride a bicycle.
Alan had sat through school concerts.
Alan had frightened her first boyfriend simply by polishing a wrench while the boy waited in our kitchen.
Alan had walked her down the aisle.
Alan had held her when her first pregnancy ended.
Alan had driven three hours in the snow because Beth once called and said, “Dad, I need you.”
Blood could explain biology.
It could not rewrite forty years.
Beth pressed the report against the table.
“He knew?”
“Yes.”
“And he never treated me differently.”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“Not once.”
She covered her face.
I pulled her against me.
“Then you already know who your father was.”
Behind us, Detective Ramirez cleared his throat.
“There’s another document.”
He pointed to a laboratory note.
A handwritten sentence had been copied beneath the report.
The Thomas Ellis sample was substituted.
Alan had circled those words.
Below them he had written:
CARTER NEEDED US TO BELIEVE THOMAS WAS THE FATHER.
Rebecca frowned.
“Why?”
I opened the ST. CATHERINE’S envelope.
Inside was a photocopy of an old personnel photograph.
Dr. Robert Carter.
My biological father.
The man whose face had lived somewhere in my memory for most of my life without a name attached to it.
Under the picture Alan had written:
Founder, Graystone Medical Holdings.
Not merely Graystone Holdings.
Medical.
I kept reading.
Carter had quietly invested in private fertility clinics during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
St. Catherine’s had been one of several hospitals used in an experimental reproductive program.
My stomach twisted.
Beth whispered, “Experimental?”
Denise read over my shoulder.
“This can’t be legal.”
“It wasn’t,” I said.
Records showed unauthorized fertility procedures.
Falsified consent forms.
Switched samples.
Altered birth records.
Women who had never agreed to participate.
Children whose biological fathers were hidden behind invented names.
Evelyn’s file was one of them.
Mine was another.
And Beth’s birth had been used to hide something else.
Not an affair.
Not Thomas.
A program.
A secret Carter had spent his life protecting.
Rebecca looked at the pages.
“What was he trying to accomplish?”
I turned another sheet.
At first, the language meant nothing to me.
Then one sentence had been underlined by Alan.
Donors selected from families holding target property or financial interests.
Rebecca stared.
“Property?”
Denise understood first.
“They weren’t only experimenting.”
“No.”
I felt sick.
“They were creating inheritance claims.”
Graystone’s scheme had been breathtakingly cruel.
Identify valuable family assets.
Create or manipulate biological relationships.
Hide the records.
Wait decades.
Then use descendants, disputed parentage, or forged documents to challenge ownership.
The Pennsylvania property had been the biggest prize.
Thirty million dollars in land, mineral rights, and development potential.
Beth whispered, “So whoever did this wanted me connected to Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“Because Thomas owned the property.”
“Exactly.”
If Beth could be presented as Thomas’s biological daughter, Graystone could manufacture a claim through her.
Or threaten us into signing one.
Rebecca looked toward the old DNA report.
“They needed Margaret to believe it too.”
I nodded.
Because frightened people make terrible decisions.
Ashamed people keep secrets.
Families destroy themselves before strangers ever have to.
That had been Carter’s real weapon.
Not money.
Shame.
The front door opened.
Every officer turned.
Detective Ramirez reached for his weapon.
A voice called:
“Don’t shoot. Please.”
Thomas stepped inside with both hands raised.
Beth gasped.
I stared at my brother.
Really stared.
He was eighty-one now.
Bent.
Thin.
His hair almost completely white.
But his eyes were Thomas’s.
The same gray eyes that used to roll whenever Mother served meatloaf.
The same scar above his eyebrow from falling out of our oak tree when he was twelve.
I wanted to run to him.
I wanted to hit him.
I did neither.
Ramirez ordered him against the wall.
Thomas complied.
After checking him for weapons, the detective said, “You understand you are a person of interest in a burglary.”
“I didn’t break into this house.”
“You possessed stolen property.”
“I took it from the man who did.”
“Name.”
Thomas hesitated.
Ramirez stepped closer.
“Name.”
“Daniel Mercer.”
Denise suddenly went pale.
I noticed.
“You know him?”
She nodded slowly.
“Elaine Mercer.”
“What?”
“The hospice nurse who handled Alan’s final medication delivery.”
My blood went cold.
Thomas looked at her.
“Daniel is her son.”
The twenty minutes returned.
The recliner.
My closed eyes.
Alan dying beside me.
I gripped the table.
“What did they do to my husband?”
Thomas looked at me.
And for the first time since entering, he looked ashamed.
“Alan called me three days before he died.”
“Why?”
“He knew someone had accessed his medical records.”
Denise whispered, “Graystone.”
Thomas nodded.
“He believed they knew he had copied the files.”
“What happened that morning?”
Thomas looked at the floor.
“Daniel entered through the back door.”
I stopped breathing.
“Our back door?”
“Alan had given me a camera to install outside your house months earlier.”
I stared.
“There was a camera?”
“Hidden in the birdhouse above the garage.”
Alan’s ridiculous wooden birdhouse.
He had spent two Saturdays building it.
No birds ever used it.
I had teased him mercilessly.
Thomas continued.
“The camera recorded Daniel arriving at 5:56 a.m.”
I felt my stomach twist.
I had been asleep.
“What did he do?”
“The kitchen camera caught part of it.”
“There was another camera?”
Thomas almost smiled.
“Alan was thorough.”
Yes.
He was.
“He replaced one of Alan’s liquid medications.”
Denise whispered something I could not hear.
Ramirez immediately stepped aside to radio another officer.
“Where is the recording?” I demanded.
Thomas pointed toward the green box.
“USB drive. Under the foam lining.”
Ramirez found it.
He did not play it for us.
I was grateful.
I had spent a year living with the image of Alan’s final minutes.
I did not need new ones.
Thomas continued.
“Alan woke up while Daniel was inside.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“He saw him.”
“Then why didn’t he wake me?”
Thomas looked directly at me.
“Because Daniel threatened you.”
The room disappeared.
Thomas’s voice softened.
“Alan knew he had minutes.”
I covered my mouth.
“So he stayed quiet.”
“Yes.”
The flip phone.
5:41 a.m.
But Daniel arrived at 5:56.
I frowned.
“The draft was written before Daniel arrived.”
Thomas nodded.
“Alan already knew something was coming.”
“Then who was the message for?”
“Denise.”
She stared at him.
Thomas continued.
“He wanted her to tell you he had kept his promise.”
I looked at her.
“The promise to Samuel?”
Thomas shook his head.
“No.”
Everything went silent.
“What promise?”
Thomas walked slowly toward the table.
“Alan made Samuel several promises.”
“To protect Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“To manage the trust.”
“Yes.”
“To keep our family secrets.”
“Yes.”
Thomas looked at me.
“But the last promise wasn’t to Samuel.”
I felt my throat tighten.
“Then who?”
“You.”
I stared.
“I never asked him to promise anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“When?”
“The night Beth was born.”
I shook my head.
“I was unconscious.”
“Before that.”
I tried to remember.
Labor.
Pain.
Alan beside me.
My fingers nearly crushing his.
I had been terrified because something was wrong.
The doctors kept moving in and out.
I remembered grabbing Alan’s shirt.
A sentence came back.
If anything happens to me, you keep our baby safe.
My knees weakened.
I whispered, “I told him to protect Beth.”
Thomas nodded.
“He never forgot.”
Tears filled my eyes.
Alan had spent forty years keeping a promise I did not even remember making him give.
Thomas said, “When he discovered Beth’s medical file, he realized Carter’s network had been tracking her since birth.”
“So he kept quiet.”
“Yes.”
“He moved us.”
“Yes.”
“He watched them.”
“Yes.”
“He spent sixteen years investigating.”
“Yes.”
“And when he was dying?”
Thomas looked toward the envelopes.
“He made sure you would finally have enough evidence to end it.”
I looked at Alan’s careful handwriting.
PROPERTY.
BETH.
REBECCA.
GRAYSTONE.
MARGARET — LAST.
My husband had known he would not be alive to explain himself.
So he built a path.
One envelope at a time.
One secret at a time.
Not perfectly.
Not fairly.
But deliberately.
Detective Ramirez returned.
“Officers are locating Daniel Mercer now.”
“And Elaine?”
“They’ll speak with her too.”
Thomas said, “There are more names in the Graystone envelope.”
Ramirez took it.
Inside were bank records, company registrations, photographs, recordings, correspondence, and names spanning four decades.
Enough to destroy careers.
Enough to reopen cases.
Enough to bring people out of hiding.
Denise whispered, “Alan collected all this while he was sick?”
Thomas nodded.
“He said dying made him efficient.”
I laughed.
Then cried harder.
That sounded exactly like him.
Beth took my hand.
“Mom, what about the property?”
I opened the PROPERTY envelope.
The deed was there.
Thomas had legally transferred his interest years earlier.
Not to me.
Not to Rebecca.
Not to Beth.
To a trust.
I frowned.
“What is the Harlan-Reed Foundation?”
Thomas looked at Rebecca.
“Alan created it.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened.
“For what?”
I read the documents.
The Pennsylvania property would be sold.
After taxes and legal expenses, the proceeds would fund medical care, legal assistance, and genetic testing for people affected by Graystone and the old St. Catherine’s program.
Rebecca covered her mouth.
“Alan gave thirty million dollars away?”
“Not exactly.”
Thomas smiled faintly.
“He returned it.”
That sentence broke something open inside me.
The money had poisoned generations.
It had bought silence.
Fake deaths.
False records.
Fear.
Alan had found the only way to make it clean.
Use it for the people secrecy had hurt.
Beth squeezed my hand.
“And us?”
I looked at the final page.
Alan had left our home, retirement accounts, and everything we had built together exactly as our will had always stated.
Half to me.
Half eventually to Beth.
He had not sacrificed our life to correct someone else’s sins.
He had simply refused to profit from them.
Rebecca whispered, “He really thought of everything.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“He thought of everything except telling his wife.”
Thomas smiled sadly.
“That was Alan.”
“Yes.”
“And that was wrong.”
Thomas nodded.
“Yes.”
For the first time, nobody tried to excuse it.
Nobody told me secrecy had been necessary.
Nobody told me lies were love.
That mattered.
I looked at my brother.
“Why didn’t you come home?”
Thomas’s face changed.
“I was ashamed.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“I know.”
“You let me bury you.”
“I know.”
“You let Mother cry over an empty casket.”
His jaw tightened.
“She knew it was empty.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
Another lie.
“And Dad?”
“He arranged everything.”
“You could have contacted me after they died.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Thomas looked at Beth.
“Because by then Alan knew what Carter’s people had done.”
“And he told you to stay away?”
“No.”
Thomas looked back at me.
“He told me to come home.”
That surprised me.
“He said you deserved the truth.”
My eyes burned.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I was a coward.”
No excuses.
No promises.
No protection.
Just the truth.
Strangely, that made it easier to hear.
Thomas continued.
“I told myself staying away kept you safe.”
“And did it?”
“No.”
“Did it protect Rebecca?”
“No.”
“Beth?”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“It only protected me from seeing what I had done.”
I nodded.
“That is the first thing you’ve said today that I believe completely.”
He accepted it.
There would be no dramatic embrace.
No instant forgiveness.
Some wounds do not heal because someone finally apologizes.
But perhaps they can stop bleeding.
Detective Ramirez took Thomas aside for questioning.
Beth sat beside Rebecca.
The two women looked at each other awkwardly.
Rebecca laughed first.
“So what does this make us?”
Beth wiped her eyes.
“I gave up trying to calculate it three secrets ago.”
For the first time in two days, I laughed hard enough to feel it.
Then I saw the final envelope.
MARGARET — LAST.
Everyone became quiet.
I picked it up.
Alan had sealed it with tape.
Three pieces.
Naturally.
I opened it.
Inside was no legal document.
No shocking photograph.
No medical record.
Just four sheets of yellow legal paper.
My husband’s handwriting.
Margaret,
If you reached this letter, then you know more about me now than you wanted to.
I sat down.
Beth moved beside me.
Rebecca sat on the other side.
I read aloud.
I spent most of my life believing keeping someone safe and keeping something from them were the same thing.
They are not.
I learned that too late.
My throat tightened.
I continued.
Samuel taught me loyalty.
You taught me love.
Beth taught me fear.
Not fear of her.
Fear of losing what mattered.
So when I discovered the truth about Carter, I became very good at protecting all of you and very bad at trusting any of you.
I wiped my eyes.
That was Alan.
Painfully, maddeningly Alan.
I told myself every lie bought you another ordinary day.
Maybe some of them did.
But ordinary days built on secrets collect interest.
Eventually the bill comes due.
I looked at Thomas.
He lowered his eyes.
Alan continued.
If Beth learns I am not her biological father, tell her something for me.
A father is the man who stays when the fever hits at two in the morning.
The man who teaches you to drive even when you nearly destroy the mailbox.
The man who sits in the front row when you have only one line in the school play.
The man who answers the phone.
Beth began sobbing.
I wrapped an arm around her.
Tell her I was her father.
Not because a test said so.
Because she let me be.
Beth pressed her face into my shoulder.
I kept reading through tears.
Rebecca deserves the truth about Samuel.
He loved her badly sometimes, because frightened men often confuse silence with protection.
I understand him better than I wish I did.
Rebecca closed her eyes.
And Thomas deserves something too.
I looked toward my brother.
He deserves the chance to tell the truth without controlling what anyone does with it afterward.
Thomas wiped his face.
Then came the part addressed to me.
Margaret, you deserve to be furious.
I laughed through my tears.
“Finally.”
Beth laughed too.
I never cheated on you.
I never stopped loving you.
I never had another family.
I never regretted one morning beside you.
Even the morning you threw my cigarettes into the sink and told me I smelled like a bus station.
I laughed harder.
“Those cigarettes were disgusting.”
The room smiled with me.
I continued.
You once asked me why I always fixed things instead of replacing them.
I told you it was because new things cost too much.
That was only half true.
The other half was that I liked proving broken things could still work.
My voice began trembling.
But people aren’t clocks or porch steps.
You cannot quietly repair them while they sleep.
They have to choose.
So I am leaving the choice to you.
Do what you want with the property.
Do what you want with Thomas.
Do what you want with my secrets.
Burn every page if that gives you peace.
But please do one thing I should have done years ago.
Tell Beth everything.
Tell Rebecca everything.
And after that, no more secrets.
I stopped reading.
There were two paragraphs left.
The unsent text you found was for Denise.
“Tell her I kept my promise.”
I meant you.
My vision blurred.
I read the next sentence twice before I could say it aloud.
I promised you I would keep our daughter safe.
I did.
Beth broke down.
So did I.
Then came the final lines.
But protecting someone is not the same as trusting them.
On that part, Margaret, I failed you.
I hope one day you can forgive me.
If not, I hope you can at least remember that every ridiculous thing I did began in the same place.
I loved you.
And if there is anything after this life, I will be somewhere complaining that you still leave every kitchen cabinet open.
I laughed so hard through my tears that I could barely breathe.
Because at that exact moment, three cabinet doors in Beth’s kitchen were standing open.
“Still annoying me,” I whispered.
The letter ended:
Close the cabinets, Margaret.
Then go live.
Love,
Alan.
For a long time nobody said anything.
Then I stood.
I walked into Beth’s kitchen.
And one by one, I closed every cabinet door.
Six months later, Daniel Mercer was indicted along with three former Graystone executives.
Evidence recovered from Alan’s cameras and files showed Daniel had tampered with Alan’s medication under orders to recover the documents before Alan could release them.
Elaine Mercer eventually admitted she had supplied information about Alan’s hospice schedule.
The investigation spread across three states.
St. Catherine’s old records were reopened.
Dozens of families were contacted.
Some wanted answers.
Some did not.
For once, nobody made that choice for them.
Graystone collapsed under lawsuits and criminal investigations.
The Pennsylvania property sold for more than anyone expected.
The Harlan-Reed Foundation opened its first office eighteen months later.
Rebecca became one of its board members.
She insisted she was unqualified.
I told her that being lied to for fifty-one years made her exceptionally qualified to recognize the cost of secrecy.
Beth joined too.
Thomas did not.
He said some things should be repaired without your name attached.
He moved into a small apartment twenty minutes from me.
We did not become brother and sister again overnight.
There was no overnight anymore.
We had coffee.
Then lunch.
Then another coffee.
Some days I hated him.
Some days I remembered the boy who taught me to whistle through my teeth.
Forgiveness did not arrive like lightning.
It came like weather.
Slowly.
Unevenly.
Sometimes not at all.
That was fine.
I no longer confused forgiveness with pretending nothing happened.
One spring afternoon, Rebecca and I drove to Samuel’s grave.
She placed fresh flowers beside the stone.
“He wasn’t my biological father,” she said.
“No.”
“But he was my dad.”
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“Like Alan was Beth’s.”
“Exactly.”
We stood there for a while.
Then Rebecca smiled.
“You know, technically you’re my aunt.”
I groaned.
“Do not start.”
“Aunt Margaret.”
“I will leave you here.”
She laughed.
It was the first time I heard her laugh without something sad hiding beneath it.
A year after that, on the second anniversary of Alan’s death, Beth came over with chicken salad from Costco.
Exactly like the year before.
She put it on my kitchen table.
“We’re not calling it the anniversary, right?”
“No.”
“What are we calling it?”
I looked around the house.
Alan’s watch was still in the shoebox.
His wallet too.
But the flip phone was no longer there.
I had placed it in a small frame on my desk beside his final letter.
Not because I was afraid to let it go.
Because I was no longer afraid to look at it.
“Today,” I said.
Beth smiled.
“Today is hard?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Outside, Rebecca was pulling into the driveway.
Behind her came Thomas, moving slowly with a cane.
Beth opened the front door.
For one strange second, all the people Alan had spent his life trying to keep apart were walking toward the same table.
No secrets.
No false names.
No empty graves.
No locked boxes.
Just people.
Damaged.
Complicated.
Alive.
I looked toward Alan’s photograph on the bookshelf.
“You caused quite a mess,” I told him.
Beth laughed from the hallway.
“Talking to Dad?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
I glanced at the kitchen.
One cabinet door was open.
I smiled.
“He said close the cabinet.”
Beth rolled her eyes.
I shut it.
Then I opened the front door.
Rebecca hugged me.
Thomas handed me a pie.
Beth complained that nobody had brought enough coffee.
And for the first time since Alan died, I realized I was not standing inside the ruins of my old life.
I was standing inside what came after it.
That was the lesson Alan never lived long enough to learn.
A secret can preserve a moment.
A lie can postpone a disaster.
Fear can convince you that silence is love.
But sooner or later, truth asks to be let inside.
And when it finally comes through the door, it may break the furniture, tear down the walls, and show you things you wish you had never seen.
Let it in anyway.
Because houses can be rebuilt.
Families can be redefined.
And broken hearts, unlike buried secrets, still have room to grow around the truth.
I spent forty-two years believing Alan’s greatest promise was that he would never leave me.
I was wrong.
His greatest promise was the one he kept after leaving.
He kept Beth safe.
He found Rebecca.
He left us the truth.
And in the end, he gave me the one thing his secrets had stolen from me for decades.
The right to choose what happened next.
So I chose.
I chose my daughter.
I chose Rebecca.
I chose to let Thomas earn whatever years we had left.
I chose not to inherit my parents’ silence.
I chose not to carry Alan’s mistakes as though they were instructions.
And most of all, I chose to live.
That evening, after everyone went home, I sat alone at the kitchen table and opened Alan’s flip phone one final time.
The draft was still there.
Tell her I kept my promise.
For a year, those five words had frightened me.
Now I smiled.
I pressed DELETE.
The phone asked:
DELETE DRAFT?
YES.
I pressed it.
The message disappeared.
Then I turned off the phone.
Not because I was finished loving Alan.
Because I finally understood that love did not live inside that little silver phone.
It lived in Beth’s laugh.
In Rebecca’s stubbornness.
In the repaired porch step Alan had worried about.
In forty-two years of ordinary mornings.
And in the life still waiting for me after all the secrets were gone.
I placed the phone back in the shoebox.
Closed the lid.
And this time, I did not feel afraid.
I walked upstairs.
Turned off the lights.
And before leaving the kitchen, I noticed one cabinet door hanging open.
I could almost hear him.
Margaret.
I smiled.
“Goodnight, Alan.”
Then I closed it.
And kept going.
THE END
