Sockets.
Old receipts.
A flashlight.
One photograph tucked under the lid.
She removed it.
A young boy stood beside a truck.
I knew the boy.
Me.
Maybe nine years old.
My father had one hand on my shoulder.
I looked furious because I had just been told to stop climbing a fence.
I took the photograph.
“Where did he get this?”
“It was always there.”
My throat closed.
She continued quietly.
“There are more.”
Under the removable tray was a false bottom.
I almost laughed.
Mechanics love false-bottom toolboxes.
Cash.
Registration documents.
Keys.
Things wives supposedly should not know exist.
She lifted the panel.
Letters.
Dozens.
Bundles tied with rubber bands.
Every envelope carried my name.
Some also included my sister’s.
Dates covered twenty-five years.
My hands went numb.
“He never sent them?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I didn't know they existed.”
I picked up the earliest.
The year after he disappeared.
Then another.
My thirteenth birthday.
High-school graduation.
My first job.
I stared at her.
“How did he know these things?”
She looked uncomfortable.
“Your sister?”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
Later.
But some letters predated their contact.
My mother?
Maybe.
I opened the envelope from my eighteenth birthday.
The first line stopped me.
I don't know whether writing this is cowardice or the only decent thing I have left.
I read.
He described getting sober.
Working.
Thinking about contacting me.
Stopping because each attempt felt like asking me to relieve his guilt.
He wrote that fathers were supposed to protect children from danger, not become the danger.
He wrote that leaving had been necessary once.
Staying gone might have become cowardice later.
He admitted not knowing the difference.
I read three pages.
Then put it down.
The woman sat across from me.
“You don't have to read them tonight.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No.”
Her voice was firm.
I looked up.
She pointed toward my shaking hands.
“You don't.”
Something about being ordered by a stranger should have irritated me.
Instead it helped.
I leaned back.
She looked at the unopened envelope from the glove box.
“That one might be different.”
“How?”
“It's newer.”
I examined it.
She was right.
The paper had less yellowing.
The handwriting was shakier.
Near the corner was a date.
Thirteen months ago.
Two months before he died.
My chest tightened.
I opened it.
The letter began differently.
Son,
I stopped.
One word.
That was all it took.
I read aloud because silence felt impossible.
“‘If this letter reaches you, it will probably be because I failed again to do the brave thing while I was alive.’”
The woman lowered her eyes.
I continued.
“‘I have spent years telling myself leaving you alone was respect. Some years it was. Other years, I think it was fear wearing respectable clothes.’”