My Brother Didn’t Speak to Me for 25 Years. His Will Left Me Half of His Maine Blueberry Farm, and a Partner I’d Never Met

“I’m the brother.”

“He talked about you,” she said. “Not often. But he did.”

“What did he say?”

She went back to raking.

“Ask him yourself,” she said. “You’ve got his letter in your pocket. I can see it.”

That night, alone in a motel room in Machias, I opened it.

It was two pages long. Patrick wrote that he was sorry. That he’d been jealous of me our whole lives, and angry at himself, and too proud to call. He said he’d picked up the phone a hundred times.

At the end, he wrote: