"It began with my grandmother's early morning phone call."

I assumed it was just another call for attention from a lonely and sick old woman. Nothing more than one of my typical trips to resupply her with cigarettes and beer.

How wrong I was.

"I have something important to tell you girls," she told me. "Something you all need to know before I die."

By "girls" she meant my mother, my half-sister, and a cousin I'd never met. My job was to get us all together.

What I thought might take a day or two, took a week and what I learned, what we all learned, was how trauma of the past rippled through each successive generation.