Now, three years later, those words hung in Samuel Mercer’s office like something sharpened.
I opened the box.
Inside were three objects.
The brass key.
A photograph.
And a folded piece of paper with my name written across it in Richard’s unmistakable handwriting.
My breath caught.
Not because of the letter.
Because of the photograph.
It was old.
At least forty years old.
Two young men stood beside a half-constructed office building.
One was Richard.
I recognized him even though his hair was dark and his face was almost impossibly young.
He couldn’t have been older than thirty-five.
The second man had one arm around Richard’s shoulders.
He was smiling directly into the camera.
My hands began to shake.
“Where did he get this?”
Samuel said nothing.
I lifted the photograph closer.
The man beside Richard had my eyes.
My mouth.
My chin.
I had seen only a handful of photographs of him growing up.
