Annie thought she had found a quiet way to survive: three hours of reading each Sunday to a blind widower in a house full of books. But after his death, one sealed envelope at his will reading forced her to question everything she knew about her past.
I was 26 and drowning in debt when I answered a strange advertisement.
“Seeking someone to read books aloud to an elderly blind man every Sunday. Generous pay.”
Three hours every Sunday.
I could do that. I had done far worse for far less money. At that point in my life, I was working two part-time jobs, dodging calls from debt collectors, and eating instant noodles more often than I wanted to admit.
Most of my debt came from medical bills and student loans.
My mother had gotten sick when I was in high school, and I spent the last year of her life trying to keep us both afloat.
She died when I was 17, leaving me with nothing but a shoebox of old photos, a few unpaid bills, and a silence in our tiny apartment that never really went away.
I never knew my father. My mother rarely talked about him.
Whenever I asked, her face changed, like someone had pulled a curtain across it.
So I stopped asking.
By 26, I had gotten used to being alone. I told myself I liked it that way. It was easier than admitting no one was coming to help me.
That was why the advertisement caught my eye.
The pay was almost too generous, enough to cover my overdue electric bill and part of my loan payment. I called before I could talk myself out of it.
Two days later, I stood in front of a massive house at the end of a quiet, tree-lined road, smoothing my thrift-store blouse with damp palms.
A housekeeper named Noreen greeted me. She was in her late 50s, with sharp eyes and a kind mouth.
“You must be Annie.”
“Yes.
I’m here about the reading position.”
“He’s waiting in the library.”
The house smelled like old wood, lemon polish, and rain. Everything inside was grand but quiet, as though the rooms had been holding their breath for years.
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