SHE GAVE HIS DAUGHTER’S DOG AWAY — THEN BOUGHT HER KIDS A NEW PUPPY

Aunt Ruth was already getting up when I showed her Leo’s message.

She called Dad. I heard him cross the downstairs hall, then the front door opened.

“Stay here,” Aunt Ruth told me.

I tried. I made it as far as my doorway.

Through the front window, I saw Vanessa beside her car, reaching into the back seat. Dad stood a few feet away. She turned when she heard him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Getting my things.”

“At ten at night?”

She held up a coat.

Aunt Ruth came down the stairs. I followed her, keeping my phone in my hand. Dad saw me at the doorway and told me to go back inside.

Then Leo appeared beside me.

“It’s in the trunk,” he whispered. “I saw her put it there.”

Vanessa heard him. “Leo, go to bed.”

“What’s in the trunk?” Dad asked.

Leo pressed his shoulder against mine. “A grocery bag. It has Nia’s blue scarf in it.”

Vanessa closed the car door.

Dad held out his hand. “Please open the trunk.”

“It’s my car.”

“Nia’s things are in it.”

She looked toward the house. Maya had come to the window in her pajamas. Her face was pale.

Vanessa saw her too. For a second, I thought she might open the trunk.

Instead, she got into the driver’s seat.

Dad stepped away from the car. He did not try to stop her. Aunt Ruth pulled Leo and me farther up the path as Vanessa drove away.

Maya began crying behind the glass.

Dad called the police. He told them about the bank request, the items sold to Bell & Sons, and what Leo had seen. He also gave them Vanessa’s license plate.

Then he came inside and sat with all three of us.

Maya climbed onto his lap. “Is Mom in trouble?”

“She needs to answer some questions,” Dad said.

“Will she come home?”

“I don’t know tonight.”

I watched Leo stare at his knees. He had told the truth, and Vanessa had driven away without saying goodbye to him.

I reached for his hand.

A police officer came by later to take our account. Dad answered most of the questions. When the officer asked me about the wooden box, I described the yellow flowers I had painted on its lid when I was eight.

Leo told her what he had seen. He spoke so quietly that she moved closer to hear him.

The next morning, Dad got a call from the auction company. They had paused the sale of Mom’s ring. It was still there, and they would work with the police and Dad to return it.

I felt one knot inside me loosen.

The letters were harder to trace.

Dad checked the transactions Vanessa had made with a shared card. Aunt Ruth called secondhand stores on the route between our house and Bell’s. I sat at the table with her and wrote down each answer.

One shop owner remembered a painted box. She thought it had come in with several other items, but she had sold it the day before.

“Do you know who bought it?” Aunt Ruth asked.

The owner looked through her records. She had a customer’s first name and a phone number from a delivery request.

I held my breath as Aunt Ruth wrote them down.

The woman’s name was Evelyn. She lived forty minutes away.

Dad called. When he explained who I was, she went quiet.

“I bought the box for my granddaughter,” she said. “I saw there were envelopes inside. I meant to bring them back to the store.”

“Do you still have them?” Dad asked.

“I have the box. My granddaughter took it to her room.”

We drove there that afternoon.

Evelyn met us at the door. She looked embarrassed and led us to a kitchen table where the blue box waited.

The yellow flowers were scratched, but I knew every one.

I lifted the lid.

Mom’s blue scarf lay inside, neatly folded. Beneath it were two birthday letters, both unopened.

There should have been six.

I searched the box again, then looked at Evelyn.

Her granddaughter had taken one envelope to school for a project about handwriting. She had not known what it was. Evelyn called the school at once.

The other three envelopes had been missing when she bought the box.

I sat down before my legs gave way.

Evelyn apologized. She had bought the box because she liked the painted flowers. She offered it to me without asking for the money back, though Dad insisted on paying her.

On our way out, I noticed a small mark underneath the lid. Mom had written my initials beside the date we painted it together.

I touched the letters with my thumb.

At home, I put the box on my shelf. I left the envelopes closed. I wanted to open them when I felt ready, the way Mom had intended.

That evening, Dad’s lawyer called.

Dad listened, then asked her to repeat something. When he hung up, his eyes found mine across the kitchen.

“There’s another person we need to speak with,” he said.