The letters were from Milo’s mother, Tasha. She had written to my brother when she was nineteen, telling him she was pregnant, then again after Milo was born, begging for help. He never answered. My brother had been eighteen and terrified, and then he simply chose to forget. Tasha raised Milo alone until she died of an overdose when he was fifteen. After that, Milo bounced through foster homes and ended up sleeping behind that abandoned bookstore.

Mom found the letters a month after Milo declined her proposal. She recognized Tasha’s face from the photo Milo carried in his backpack. Quietly, she arranged a DNA test using a coffee cup he left behind. When the results came back, she confronted my brother. He begged her not to tell anyone. She told him she had already changed her will, and that the truth would come out after she was gone. That was why he shouted.

Her letter to Milo explained everything. She left him her house, the one with the porch steps he had repaired, along with a trust to cover college if he wanted it. “You bought me flowers with your last dollar,” she wrote. “Let me give you a home with mine.” She signed it Grandma. Milo read it twice, then pressed the letter against his chest and cried without making a sound.

My brother tried to contest the will, and lost. The judge called the letters some of the clearest evidence she had ever seen. Milo moved into Mom’s house that spring and enrolled in community college to study carpentry. I’m his aunt, and I finally act like one. Last month, my brother called him for the first time. They are talking. Every year on Mom’s birthday, Milo brings yellow roses to her grave. And he always buys a second bunch for me.