Part Five: The Boxes
The next morning, investigators returned to Reena’s house with a warrant.
They found the basement as described. They found the bolt. They found the window with the dirt and fabric along the frame.
They also found a closet in the upstairs hallway.
Inside it: boxes. A column of them, stacked neatly against the back wall. Birthday paper, Christmas wrapping, familiar handwriting on the tags.
Mine.
Three years of presents I had dropped at the door when Reena wouldn’t let me inside. The toy truck I bought for Drew’s fourth birthday. The stuffed elephant for Lily’s first Christmas after Aaron died. Books. Clothes. Cards with photographs of Aaron and me as children, the ones I had thought might comfort them, might let them see that their father had been loved his whole life.
Most were still unopened.
When investigators showed Drew photographs of the boxes, he apparently stared at them for a long time.
Then he asked: “Why didn’t Uncle Peter give those to me?”
The social worker told me later.
I walked out of the hospital into the parking lot and sat in my truck with both hands on the wheel.
For three years, I had been blaming myself for not pushing harder. For accepting too many explanations. For choosing to be respectful when I should have been insistent.
But Drew hadn’t understood any of that. Drew had understood only the result, which was that his father’s brother had stopped coming. Had stopped calling. Had apparently forgotten that he existed.
He had spent three years believing I had given up on him.
That was the detail that broke something in me that I haven’t fully reassembled.
