A fourth velvet box sat there. Smaller than the others.
Inside was an old bank passbook, its corners soft with age. The account had been opened in 2005 – one month after Vanessa walked out of our lives.
Three names were written inside the cover.
Emma. Sophie. Claire.
Two Hundred and Fifty-Two
I turned the pages slowly.
Deposit. Deposit. Deposit.
Every month. Without a single gap. For twenty-one years.
Beneath the passbook lay a thick bundle of paper receipts bound with a rubber band gone brittle with time. Across the top, in that same slanted hand, Vanessa had written a number.
252.
Two hundred and fifty-two deposits. Two hundred and fifty-two months. One for every month she had been gone.
“How much?”
I hadn’t heard the kitchen door open. Emma stood there, her sisters crowded behind her.
I checked the balance on the final page. After twenty-one years of deposits and interest, the account held just over two hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
