“Those are only for my real grandchild.” My mother lifted the plate of fries above my four-year-old son’s reach and said it loudly enough for the entire backyard to hear.

The rubber band broke between my thumb and forefinger with a dry snap, dropping brittle pieces onto the quilt.

I touched the top envelope. The ink was faded, blue ballpoint pressing hard into white paper. Jesse’s writing had always been thick, slightly slanted, the script of a man who worked with his hands and didn't write often, but when he did, he took his time.

Postmark: August 14, 2021. Indianapolis, IN.

That was three days after Dany was born. Three days after I sat in a sterile hospital room bleeding, weeping, holding a child whose father had seemingly walked out into the air without leaving a trace.

I opened the envelope. My fingers were cold, despite the late summer heat blowing through Colleen’s open window.

Lucy, the first page read.

They won't let me up to the room. Your mom stood in the lobby with two security guards and told me if I tried to step onto the elevator, she’d have me arrested for trespassing. She said you didn't want to see me. She said you looked at the baby and told her to make sure I never came near either of you again. I don't believe her, Lucy. I know we had our arguments about the money and my apprentice shifts, but I know you. You wouldn't do this. I'm sitting in my truck in the hospital parking garage right now. I've got six thousand dollars in cashier's checks—everything I saved from the overtime on the substation contract. I'm leaving it in this envelope with your dad. He promised he’d give it to you when your mom went home to shower. Please call me. Just tell me his name. Tell me if he’s okay. I love you.

I stared at the paper. The letters swam together.

Below the letter sat three cashier’s checks. Cashier’s checks that had been stamped, signed, and cancelled—not by me, but deposited into an account I had never seen before.

An account bearing the joint names of Kenneth and Evelyn Miller. My parents.

I opened the second envelope.

Postmark: October 2, 2021.

Lucy, Jesse wrote. Your sister Chelsea answered the door today when I came by the house. She laughed at me. She said you took the baby and moved to Chicago and that you were seeing someone else—some guy from your old high school. I called your salon line five times, but the girl at the desk said you were out. I'm sending this to your dad's work address because he's the only one who doesn't spit on my truck when I drive past. I left another two thousand dollars with him for the baby's clothes. Lucy, if you really want me gone, just write it down yourself. Write 'Jesse go away' on a piece of paper and send it to me, and I'll stop showing up. But until I see it in your handwriting, I’m not quitting on my kid.

I opened the third. The fourth. The fifth.

There were twenty-four letters spanning three years.

Twenty-four letters filled with medical money, child-support payments in cashier’s checks, receipts for cribs he had tried to deliver, photos of a nursery he had built in his small rented house, and endless, desperate pleas asking why I had erased him.

And at the bottom of the box, tucked beneath the thick stack of envelopes, was an official-looking document stamped by a notary public.

A voluntary surrender of parental rights.

It bore my name at the top—Lucille Marie Miller.

And across the bottom line, written in thin, shaky blue ink, was a signature that looked almost like mine. Almost. But the 'L' was looped wrong, and the 'M' had three crests instead of two.

It was my mother’s handwriting when she tried to imitate me.

Aunt Colleen sat on the edge of a chair near the closet, burying her face in her handkerchief.

"Your father kept them," Colleen whispered, her voice ragged with tears. "When his stroke hit eight months ago, Evelyn told me to clear out his office at the shop and bring all his papers over here so the bank wouldn't audit the accounts. She didn't know he had hidden that box inside his antique tool chest."

"Dad knew?" My voice didn't sound like mine. It sounded flat, hollowed out, like an echo down a deep well. "Dad took the money?"

"Your father was broke, Lucy," Colleen said, looking up with red-rimmed eyes. "Six years ago, before his stroke, his supply shop was three weeks from bankruptcy. Evelyn took Jesse's cashier's checks—every single one of them—and used them to pay the mortgage on the house and cover Chelsea's tuition at that private design school. Your father knew it was wrong, but he was weak. Evelyn told him if he spoke up, she'd leave him and take Chelsea with her. So he took the box, he hid the letters, and he stayed quiet."