But missing something does not mean it was safe to return to it.
Nora became more than my lawyer. She became the person who taught me how to ask questions without apologizing first. She taught me that signatures matter, that silence can be strategy, and that people who benefit from your confusion will often call your clarity cruel.
On my nineteenth birthday, I did not have a ballroom party.
I had dinner at a small Italian restaurant with Nora, my roommate Allison, and Marcus Reed, a graduate student who helped tutor me through statistics and later became one of my closest friends. There were no speeches about family loyalty. No photographers. No champagne tower.
Just pasta, laughter, and a chocolate cake Allison carried in crookedly while singing too loudly.
After dinner, Nora handed me a small envelope.
“Your grandfather asked me to give you this one year after the trust was activated,” she said.
