inside.”
Chloe looked over at Abigail until Abigail finally let out a long sigh and sat down at the kitchen table. “Fine, then let us open all three of them right now.”
We brought the remaining three boxes inside and set them on the table. Chloe opened her box first to reveal a clean index card inside. On it, Evelyn had written the exact date of her very first bank deposit, which was precisely one month after she had abandoned our home. On the back of the card, she had written the full name and street address of a prominent bank located downtown in the city of Columbus.
Abigail opened her box next, which was packed tightly with twenty-one distinct handwritten envelopes. There was one envelope for every single birthday they had ever celebrated, including their twenty-first birthday today. None of the envelopes had postage stamps, and none of them had ever been mailed through the post office. Tucked neatly beneath the stack was a card bearing a specific safe-deposit box number.
Harper opened the last box, revealing a small, polished brass key lying on a bed of velvet. We all looked at the three items lying side by side on the wooden table: the bank name, the box number, and the matching brass key. Now Evelyn’s cryptic condition finally made total sense to all of us.
The Forged Letter
Early the next morning, all four of us drove into the city to access the bank vault. Inside the metal safe-deposit box was another heavy white envelope addressed directly to the girls. Harper opened it carefully and began reading the letter aloud to the room.
“If you have made it this far, you know that I saved money for you every
