I saved a few of those texts, actually. Screenshots tucked away in a folder on my phone I don’t often open. Not out of suspicion exactly, more as a quiet record of proof. In case some future version of myself ever needed reminding that change like this was actually possible. However long it took to arrive.
Caleb and I talked often, in the months that followed. About how close we’d come to never discovering any of it.
“If you hadn’t cleared out that garage,” he said one night, “we might never have known.”
We were sitting on the back porch that evening, kids already asleep. The kind of quiet conversation we hadn’t had much time for during those three intense weeks of secret investigation. “It’s strange to think about,” I said. “How close it all came to just staying buried. For another eleven years, maybe forever.” “I think about that a lot,” Caleb admitted. “How different our lives would look right now. If you’d just left those boxes where they were.”
“I think some part of me always sensed something was off,” I said. “I just didn’t have the paperwork to prove it yet.”
“What made you finally go looking?” he asked.
