Chapter 3: What the Envelope Said
Mom held it out to me.
I didn't take it right away.
I looked at Dan instead.
His jaw was set.
His hands, still rough from the sanding and the nights in the shed, were at his sides and not moving.
"You knew he might contact me someday," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"I thought it was possible."
"Did you think it would be today?"
He looked at the envelope.
"No."
I took it from Mom.
The paper was slightly waxy, like it had been handled more than once before it reached us.
My name was on the front in handwriting I had never seen.
Careful letters.
The kind a person writes when they're trying to make a good impression on paper because they can't do it in person.
Mom put her hand on my shoulder.
"You don't have to open it now."
"I know."
I opened it anyway.
There was a single page inside.
Not long.
The handwriting matched the envelope — careful, slightly too upright, like someone who learned penmanship from a book.
*Kira.
I know I don't have the right to call you that.
I know I don't have the right to write to you at all.
But I'm going to be in your city next month, and I'd like to meet you, if you're willing.
Just once.
Just coffee.
You can say no.
I'll understand.
— R.*
R.
His name was Robert.
I knew that from the one photograph Mom kept in a box under her bed, the one she thought I didn't know about.
A man standing in front of a car, squinting into the sun.
He looked like nobody I recognized.
"He wants to meet," I said.
Mom didn't say anything.
Dan walked to the shed door and looked out at the yard.
The wet grass.
The morning light still low and flat across the fence.
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
His back was to me.
"I don't know yet."
He nodded once.
Still not turning around.
"Dan."
He turned.
"Why did your face change when you saw his name?"
He was quiet for a moment.
Long enough that I knew the answer wasn't going to be simple.
"Because he called here once," Dan said.
"About eight months ago.
I answered."
The shed felt smaller.
"You never told me."
"No."
"Or Mom?"
He looked at her.
She was looking at him the same way I was.
"No," he said again.
"I didn't."
Mom set her hand flat on the roof of the blue car.
"Dan.
What did he say?"
Dan came back inside the shed.
He leaned against the workbench, crossed his arms, and looked at the floor for a moment before he looked up.
"He said he'd been sober for two years.
He said he wanted to make things right.
He said—" Dan stopped.
Started again.
"He said he'd been sending money.
Into an account.
For Kira.
Since she was nine."
The morning went very quiet.
"What account?" I said.
"That's what I asked him."
"And?"
"He said he'd set it up through a lawyer.
He said your mother would know about it." Dan looked at Mom.
"I assumed you did."
Mom's face had gone the color of the shed wall.
May you like
"I didn't," she said.
"I didn't know anything about any account."
