Bennett appeared behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“I didn’t tell her,” he said nervously. “She came early.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
Then I looked at Lauren.
“Why were you hiding in my son’s bedroom?”
She glanced toward the open cardboard box.
“We were looking for something.”
I stared at her.
“You brought him into my house without telling me, then searched through Bennett’s room?”
“We weren’t searching through his things,” Lauren insisted. “We were checking behind the toy chest.”
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“For what?”
My father bent down and removed a loose piece of wooden trim from the wall.
Inside the narrow opening, wrapped in an old kitchen towel, was a small metal tin.
I recognized it immediately.
It was my mother’s recipe box.
The sight of it stole my next question.
My mother died when I was nineteen.
She had been ill for nearly a year, but my father disappeared before the end, claiming he could not bear to watch her condition worsen.
Lauren and I remained.
We took turns helping her eat, washing her hair, and sitting beside her when the pain became unbearable.
After the funeral, my father called twice.
I had spent years convincing myself his absence no longer mattered.
“What is that doing here?” I asked.
My father held the box carefully.
“What is that doing here?” I repeated.
Lauren glanced at the gap behind the toy chest.
“Dad said Mom hid it in this room before you bought the house.”
I looked directly at him.
“You knew it was here all this time?”
