A daughter. Thomas had never once mentioned a daughter.
I opened Grocery Store next. A faded receipt for two cans of tomato soup and a loaf of bread, the ink gone soft with age. On the back: She accepted the soup.
Then Laundromat — a single dryer sheet, folded into a small, careful square, tucked inside like something worth preserving. We both waited for the blue blanket. She said it still smelled like home.
I opened Park Bench and found an old Polaroid: Thomas, younger, sitting beside a man in a worn brown coat, both of them looking at something just outside the photograph’s edge. On the back: He smiled before I left.
None of it made sense yet. Each envelope handed me a fragment and then closed its fist around the rest.
I kept going anyway. A child’s crayon drawing, folded into eighths. A coffee shop receipt with no note at all. A cocktail napkin with a phone number crossed out so hard the pen had torn through the paper.
