Sometimes she said the address was wrong. But it was never wrong.”
He opened the box.
Inside were photographs.
Not the letters themselves. Photographs of envelopes, each one bearing my name in handwriting I recognized immediately.
Mine.
My throat tightened.
Mr. Greer arranged them on the table.
There were more than six.
Dozens.
Some were addressed from Kuwait. Others from Afghanistan. A few carried dates I barely remembered writing.
I reached for one.
My hand shook.
On the front, beneath my parents’ address, was a faint red stamp.
REFUSED.
“How many?” I asked.
“Thirty-two that I documented,” Mr. Greer said. “There may have been others.”
My mother moved toward the box.
I stepped in front of it.
She stopped.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“Then explain it.”
“I was trying to keep the story consistent.”
My father stared at her. “What story?”
She looked at him, then at me.
For the first time, she seemed to realize that the lie had not been a single decision. It had been a staircase, each step leading to another.
“When Emily left,” she said, “people asked where she was.”
“I told you I was enlisting.”
“You had already left.”
“I was at basic training.”
“You wouldn’t answer my calls.”
“I didn’t have access to my phone.”
“You sent one message saying you were fine.”
“I sent several.”
She looked down.
“I told everyone you had gone to school out west.”
My father’s eyebrows drew together. “You told me she was in prison.”
“I didn’t say that at first.”
“When did you?”
“When Reverend Mallory asked why Emily wasn’t at the memorial service for your mother.”
