A stranger’s box should have meant nothing to me.

But some part of me, some deep animal part beneath the confusion, already knew that this was not a stranger’s box, that everything in my life was arranged on one side of the moment I was about to have and everything after would be arranged on the other.

Mr.

Vance said nothing.

He simply waited, watching me with that grave, patient attention, letting me come to it in my own time.

And so, with my heart pounding against the box, I reached in, and I picked up the birth certificate first.