The foundation's new fiscal year began in October. We had a new board seat, filled by a woman named Priya who ran a community college and had been the first in her family to graduate. We had a new audit policy and a new conflict-of-interest policy and a new website where anyone could read the numbers. The scholarship fund was smaller, but the applications were up, because Ruth had told everyone she knew that the foundation was honest now, and honesty turned out to be a kind of advertising.
I worked harder than I had in years. Not because I had something to prove, but because the work was finally mine. I took the meetings I had once let Daniel take. I read the grant agreements myself. I learned the names of every girl on the scholarship list, and I wrote them letters in December, one by on
