Dear Audrey and Olivia Rhys, it began in neat cursive handwriting.
The Troy family is deeply saddened to inform you of Kenneth J. Troy’s untimely passing on January 3rdfollowing a tragic illness.
Kenneth J. Troy was my father’s name.
And January 3rdwas over a month ago.
I suddenly felt dizzy.
Kenneth J. Troy is survived by his beloved wife Camilla Troy, of thirty years, and their two children, Isabella (24) and Madison (20).
He had a family?
Following his wishes, the Troy family held a graveside service at the family plot on the Troy-Fitzgibbons estate in Georgia. Kenneth J. Troy was a modest, private man and wanted it that way.
He had an estate?
I clawed through the rest of the papers.
Formal letters from lawyers.
Orders of protection. Restraining orders. Dozens of them.
Bank statements that went all the way back to the year I was born.
I pawed through each one, separating them into piles across the coffee table to examine them.
Each month the Troy family, of Berkeley Lake Georgia, deposited exactly $15,000 into an account with mine and my mother’s name on it.
For the lasttwenty-five years.
The most recent bank statement was from January, last month. Totaling the account to a little over four million, five hundred thousand dollars.
I was a millionaire.
Paid in full by a family who from what it looked like, compensated my mother for pretending I’d never been born.
