I have never encountered anything that unsettled me as much as that closet, because it was proof the isolation wasn’t an accident of neglect.

It was authored.

Someone had done the patient work of making two children believe they were alone in the world, and had kept every receipt of my love locked away as carefully as anything else, because the love was the one thing that might have set them free.

When I got home I did not make a ceremony of it.

I set one box on the living room floor, a faded thing that said TO OLLIE, LOVE UNCLE CAL in my own handwriting, and Ollie came over and saw the writing and went very still.