Ainsley had been showing up at a construction site across town.
“Protocol’s protocol,” the officer said. “When the report came in, we looked into it. When we talked to your daughter, she told us why she was doing it.”
I stared at him. “Why was she doing it, Officer?”
He looked at me for a moment. “She told us everything. We just needed to make sure it all checked out.”
Before I could respond, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Ainsley appeared in the hallway, still in her graduation dress, and froze the moment she saw the officers.
“Why was she doing it, Officer?”
“Hey, Dad,” she said quietly. “I was going to tell you tonight, anyway.”
“Bubbles, what is going on?”
Ainsley didn’t answer right away. Instead, she said, “Can I just show you something first?” and disappeared back upstairs before I could get a word in.
She came back down carrying a shoebox. It was old, slightly dented on one corner. She set it on the kitchen table in front of me as if it were something fragile.
I recognized it the moment I saw the handwriting on the side. Mine… from a long time ago.
She came back down carrying a shoebox.
Inside were papers, folded and refolded until the creases had gone soft. An old notebook, its cover warped at the corner. And on top of everything else, an envelope I hadn’t thought about in nearly 18 years.
I picked it up slowly. I’d opened it once, years ago, and then tucked it away like something I couldn’t afford to think about again.
It was an acceptance letter from one of the best engineering programs in the state. I’d gotten in at 17, the same spring Ainsley was born, and I’d set the letter on a shelf and never touched it again because there were more immediate things to figure out.
I didn’t even remember putting it in that box. I certainly didn’t remember where the box had gone.
I’d opened it once, years ago.
“I wasn’t supposed to open it… but I did,” Ainsley revealed. “I found it when I was looking for the Halloween decorations in November. I wasn’t snooping. It was just sitting there.”
“You read it?”
“I read everything in the box, Dad. The letter. The notebook. All of it.”
The notebook was the part that got me. I’d forgotten about it entirely.
“I read everything in the box, Dad.”
