Just a shoebox with two rubber bands on it, sitting on the passenger seat next to me, with my own notes inside it and my daughter’s drawings and a bank statement I still couldn’t quite believe
was real.
Willa was sitting at the kitchen table when I came in. She had her laptop open and a stack of scholarship applications next to her. She’d been working on them all morning. Essay after essay.
“How was it?” she asked without looking up. “Did she give you her old dishes?”
I set the shoebox down on the table in front of her.
“Open it,” I said.
She looked up at me. At my face. I don’t know what she saw. Probably mascara running down my cheeks.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“Open it, baby.”
She opened it. She saw her own drawings first. The snow day floor plan. The forty-two windows.
