I said I didn’t understand.

And then she told me, and I had to sit down.

They were the gifts.

Every gift I had left on that porch over three years — the birthday presents, the Christmas boxes, the books, the little clothes I’d guessed the sizes of, a stuffed rabbit I’d had embroidered with Josie’s name before she was old enough to know her own name — all of it.

Unopened.