“Promise me you’ll listen before you decide to hate me.”
I stared at him.
“I could never hate you.”
His voice became barely more than a whisper.
“I’ve lied to you your entire life. What you believe about your childhood—and even about me—isn’t the whole truth.”
I thought his condition was affecting his thinking, but Frank insisted that he was completely aware of what he was saying.
Someone, he explained, had once asked him to take a secret to his grave.
Then he placed a small folded piece of paper in my hand.
Inside was an address.
It belonged to a house only a short drive from the home where I had grown up with Frank.
Those were the last words he ever said to me.
Twenty minutes later, I stood outside the unfamiliar house, holding the address with trembling hands. I had no idea who lived there or why Frank had sent me.
