Six Left Behind Daughters and One Returned White Box Fifteen Years Later

“Don’t worry about that,” Jerome said, his short, reassuring sentence cutting through my anxiety. “We have it covered.”

The wind picked up, rattling the screen door of the kitchen, and we headed inside to wash our hands.

The evening was quiet until the girls arrived one by one after their shifts and classes. By eight o’clock, all six of them were sitting around the long dining room table, the smell of cheap filter coffee filling the room.

The dining room table was the same one we had used since the girls were small, its pine top scarred with pen marks and water rings from countless dinners. We had sat around it to plan graduations, budget for winter boots, and decide which bills could wait until the next month.

Now, they sat in the same places they had occupied for years, but they looked like grown women ready for a trial.

Piper, my second daughter, sat near the kitchen door, checking her watch before she set down a platter of cold sandwiches. “We have twenty-four hours before the rehearsal dinner, and we need a plan.”

Lucille crossed her arms and glared at the floor, her voice sharp and direct. “We don’t need a plan. We need to tell her husband exactly who she is the minute they walk into the Oakwood Inn.”

“No,” Adele said, her calm voice cutting through the rising murmurs. “We are not going to start a shouting match in front of Jerome’s family. We are going to let the evidence do the talking.”

Shannon, the youngest, twisted her blue beaded bracelet around her left wrist, her voice rising in a rapid whisper. “What if she tells everyone that we hate her? What if Harry believes her?”

“He won’t,” Adele said, turning her head toward me. “Dad, I want you to go upstairs and get the box.”

I hesitated, rubbing my bare left wrist where my ring used to be. “Adele, those letters were meant for her, but they contain fifteen years of your private lives. Some of them are birthday cards you wrote when you were ten.”

“I know what is in them,” Adele said, her face set in a hard, determined line. “I wrote half of them. And I want them on the sideboard at the reception hall.”