Aaron spoke first. “Well?”
I sat down at the kitchen table. “The account is still active.”
“I told you they were alive!” Grace said.
Aaron shook his head. “There has to be another explanation.”
“Recent activity, Aaron!” Grace’s voice had an edge of rage in it that startled me — not because it was inappropriate, but because it was so adult, so completely justified. “Who else would be using that account? And why were only our documents in that box, not theirs?”
Aaron looked at me then. Not angry. Desperate. “If they took off, why didn’t they take us? Everything was prepared. The money, the documents.”
“Something changed,” Mia whispered.
“Like maybe they realized it’s not so easy to disappear with seven kids,” Jonah said flatly.
Grace’s face went still. “So they left us.”
I looked at my grandchildren — these seven people I had raised and worried over and stretched every resource I had for — and I made a decision.
“Since they appear to be alive,” I said, “I think we should ask them directly what happened.”
“How?” Aaron asked.
“We make them come to us,” I said.
