My whole life, my grandmother said my parents died in a car crash when I was five. There was no grave to visit and no photos from the funeral, but I believed her. Then she died and left me a sealed letter. I read the first sentence… and collapsed on the lawyer’s office floor.My grandmother always told me my parents died in a car crash, and I always believed her.I was five years old when it happened. My memories of that time are hazy at best, but I remember asking once about what happened to them.Grandma pressed her lips together and smoothed my hair back from my forehead.It was instant,” she said softly. “They didn’t suffer.”

When I was small, that was enough, but as I grew older, I started noticing the gaps in Grandma’s story.Other kids visited their deceased relatives’ graves, but not me.I had no graves to visit, no place to leave flowers.One afternoon, when I was around 12, I asked Grandma about it while we were washing dishes.Her hands stopped moving in the water.The burial was handled out of state,” she said after a moment. “There were legal complications.”