She Walked Out, and Ten Years Later She Showed Up With Expensive Gifts at a Twelfth Birthday Dinner

“Take a look at the gift boxes on the side table,” Mark added under his breath, keeping his hands in his pockets.

Vanessa was busy pouring fruit punch into a paper cup for Lily and laughing loudly at something the younger boys had said.

I went over to the side table where the discarded wrapping paper and the rest of the gift boxes were piled.

I picked up the lid of the gold box the leather jacket had come in.

I turned the cardboard over in my hands to look for the store label near the bottom corner.

A neat square hole had been snipped right through the gold paper with a small pair of scissors, all the way down to the plain brown cardboard beneath.