Ray sold Grandpa’s cabin for $285,000, and I was still standing in my kitchen with the dented thermos he’d handed me when the sale went through.

The cabin had been Grandpa’s whole life, or close enough. He fished there every morning for thirty-one years. Ray kept the property after Grandpa died, and the lawyer said… there was no will, so it was Ray’s call. I was angry, but I didn’t argue. I figured I’d already lost enough.

The thermos was green, rusted around the cap. I put it on my kitchen shelf and couldn’t look at it for a year.

I’m 48, and I live in a small place outside Houma. I work in the billing office at a clinic. My son, Caleb, was in seventh grade when Ray handed me the thermos. I don’t want to make Ray sound like some stranger who came along to hurt me. He’s my uncle.

He’d taken me fishing when I was little, and I’d spent plenty of weekends at that cabin with him and Grandpa.

That’s part…