I looked down at the faded canvas.

It was the same bag I had carried onto the Greyhound bus to basic training, worn at the corners and dusty along the seams.

Gerald had stood on the gravel porch with his gold signet ring glinting in the noon sun while I loaded it into the trunk.

I unzipped the flat storage pocket inside the cloth lining.

Tucked behind a vinyl divider was a small paper envelope postmarked twelve years ago, holding a fifty-dollar birthday check I had mailed to Clare on her eighteenth birthday.

The envelope had come back to my military transit box seven months after I posted it from my first assignment in Texas.