"A few days before she was killed."
Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
I stared at his face, dead serious, and pressed again:
"What exactly did she say?"
He glanced at me, then cast his mind back.
"She said that without Sunny, she probably wouldn't have survived. She called Sunny the greatest benefactor of her life and told me that someday, when I had the chance, I had to repay her."
"I asked her who Sunny was, where she lived. She just smiled and said she'd take me to meet her after the baby was born."
"She never got that chance."
His voice dropped lower with every word, until it finally broke into a choked sob.
But all I could do was clench the half-burned paper money tighter in my fist.
Sunny was the pet name I'd given Julia when she was small.
She'd been so tiny back then, soft and sweet-smelling, and I couldn't help calling her Sunny.
When she got older, she started complaining. Mom, that name is so embarrassing. Stop calling me that.
She even made me promise: if she ever got a boyfriend, or got married, I was never, under any circumstances, to mention the name Sunny in front of him. She was terrified of being laughed at.