“Leave it, Annie.”
“What?”
“Just leave it.”
“Mom, it’s addressed to Dad.”
“I can see that.”
“Someone sent this before the accident. They might be waiting to hear from him.”
She put the cards down.
“Throw it away.”
I stared at her.
“Are you serious?”
“Please.”
She crossed the kitchen and grabbed my wrist.
“Throw it away. Let’s pretend it never came.”
I pulled free.
Her reaction frightened me more than the package itself.
“What do you know about this?”
“Nothing that matters now.”
“It mattered to Dad.”
“Annie.”
“Somebody in Hawaii mailed him something the size of a washing machine three days before he died.”
“It’s not a washing machine.”
I stared at her.
“Then you do know.”
Mom closed her eyes.
I found a pair of scissors.
“Don’t.”
I cut through the tape.
“Annie, please.”
I opened the cardboard flaps and pulled away layers of packing paper.
Blue paint.
Wood.
For a second, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
Then I removed the remaining packing material.
It was a chair.
An old wooden kitchen chair painted blue.
The paint had worn away around the edges. One leg had been repaired with a darker piece of wood, and a black mark scarred the bottom rung as if something hot had once touched it.
I looked at Mom.
She lowered herself into one of our kitchen chairs.
Not the blue one.
“What is this?”
She said nothing.
I lifted the chair from the box and set it on the floor.
It wobbled.
Then I noticed scratches beneath the seat.
I tipped it sideways.
One word had been carved deeply into the wood in uneven letters.
GILBERT.
I covered my mouth.
Dad’s name.
It wasn’t recent. The grooves had darkened with age.
