A Father’s Love, Worth Only Paper

When her father dies, Shavon's younger sister Mia inherits three houses and two million dollars in cash. Her mother presses a thick photo album into Shavon's arms and insists her father loved her most. Every photograph inside shows Shavon as a small child, waiting by her grandmother's door through six years as a left-behind child.

Shavon's husband David watches her turn the pages. She remembers her father's final words, his refusal to explain why, while paralyzed, he called only for her and never for Mia. Her mother still shields Mia, thirty-six years old, as though she were a child. The house has already been signed over to Mia, and nothing of Shavon remains in it.

Only the album's last photograph is different: David and Shavon together, taken by her father before she married and moved away.