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

“Why would she do that?” I asked.

“If she paid for part of the package, or if she claims she’s family,” Jerome said. His short, reassuring sentences usually calmed me, but now they felt like a warning of things to come. “We just want to make sure the contract is in your name only.”

“I paid the deposit in June,” I said. “Six hundred dollars.”

“Good,” Jerome said. “Let’s keep it that way. We don’t need any surprises on the bill.”

“She has money now, Jerome,” I said. “Her husband is in commercial real estate.”

“We have enough,” Jerome said. He looked down at his boots, then back at the quiet Ohio street. “We don’t need theirs.”

“She’s going to try to turn this into her own show,” I said.

“She can try,” Jerome said. “But Adele knows who stood by her.”

A car rumbled past, its tires kicking up loose gravel from the shoulder of the road. I wondered how many people in town already knew she was coming back.

The house was quiet by nine at night. The girls were in their rooms, and the refrigerator in the kitchen gave its familiar, rattling sigh as the compressor kicked off.

I walked down the narrow hallway toward my bedroom. The floorboards creaked under my slippers, the same spots that had warned me when the girls were trying to sneak downstairs for late-night snacks.

I stopped in front of the hallway closet. The brass knob was dark, catching only the faint light from the streetlamp outside the window.

Behind that door, on the top shelf under the heavy wool blankets, sat the white cardboard box. I had not looked inside it since the year Lucille turned five.

My hand reached out, my fingers hovering an inch from the cold brass. If I opened it now, I would have to look at the postmarks and the handwriting I had spent a decade trying to forget.

The silence of the house pressed against my ears. I could hear Shannon whispering to Lucille in the bedroom at the end of the hall, their voices a soft, rapid murmur.