UNCLE HAROLD’S ESTATE

Uncle Harold was in his fifties then, single, no children of his own, in the middle of expanding Meyers Property Holdings from a small brokerage into a full commercial real estate firm.

He wasn’t a man who showed affection easily — in the first five years I lived with him, I can’t recall more than a handful of hugs.

But he was the first person in my life to ask me what I wanted to study, who I wanted to become, and then actually listen to the answer.

He hired a tutor to work with me on advanced math every weekend, took me to visit the company’s construction sites every summer so I’d understand real estate wasn’t just numbers on a page, and never once missed a parent-teacher conference at my Seattle high school, no matter how much he had to rearrange his packed schedule to be there.

“You don’t owe anyone an explanation for choosing a better chance for yourself,” he told me one evening, after I’d finally told him everything that happened in Millbrook, my voice still shaking with a guilt I couldn’t understand why I was carrying.

“Family isn’t supposed to be a place where you have to make yourself smaller so someone else looks bigger.”

The year I turned fifteen, Uncle Harold formally completed my adoption.

My name changed from Diana Carter to Diana Meyers.