For Seven Years I Sent Forty Thousand Dollars Every January, Until Emma Finally Spoke

I opened the bottom drawer and lifted out the heavy blue binder of store accounts.

Tucked inside the back flap were the carbon slips for forty thousand dollars, seven slips of yellow paper dated every January from 2017 to 2023.

Two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, written out in black fountain pen ink while Laura slept under the grass on the hill.

I pulled a heavy oak storage chest off the bottom shelf of the storage closet.

My father had built it out of quarter-sawn oak back in 1948 and fitted it with a heavy brass latch and a small iron key.