“Three days.”
“Who would hide a hospital discharge paper in a towel?” Emily asked, her voice dropping.
Nobody answered her.
The kitchen hummed with the quiet vibration of the refrigerator.
The silence stretched between us as we stared at the two items on the table.
The kitchen clock chimed once for one in the morning.
Emily stood up, her knee popping slightly as she walked toward the hallway.
She returned a moment later carrying a flat cardboard box from the attic.
It was the one where we kept the old family holiday cards and the tax receipts.
“Dad, we owe you the truth about what we found in the attic,” Emily said.
She opened the box and took out an old black-and-white photograph.
She laid it gently beside the silver ring on the table.
The photograph showed a young woman sitting on the stone steps of a large house in Savannah, surrounded by overgrown azalea bushes.
