How it opens
You were Walter Methven, and your earliest knowledge was that your father existed and must never be mentioned.
The mention of him brought your mother's face to the stillness of a shut door, and you learned that stillness before you learned to read.
Mrs MethvenSit down, Walter. It is about your father. He is dead; and you will have to be greater than we are.
Choose
Ask first what he died of, because the body asks before the heart does.
Ask first what he has left you, because poverty has its own manners.
Ask first what he was, because twenty-two years of silence is the one debt you want receipted.