The DNA Matched My Cousin, Not Me, So They Kept Me Anyway novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Box

Rhea's POV

The box was a shoebox, tied with kitchen string, and the string had gone brown with age.

Constance had set it in the middle of the long dining table with nothing else around it.

She had cleared the whole table for it, the silver and the flowers and the place cards.

"I couldn't open it without you," she said. "It's your mother's handwriting. I'd know it anywhere."

On the lid, in blue ballpoint, someone had written: Connie.

I untied the string with my long square fingers.

Inside were cards.

They were Christmas cards, the cheap kind from a drugstore rack, each in its own envelope.

Every envelope was addressed to Constance Fallon, at a house in Farmington, and every one had a Hartford postmark.

None had been opened.

"Nineteen," Constance said. "My father kept every one and never said."

Her voice was perfectly steady, and her hands were not.

I opened the first.

It had a drawing of a snowman on the front and a few lines inside.

Connie, I married him anyway. He cooks. We are all right. I hope Mother's hip is better. Merry Christmas. Your sister.

Constance made a small sound, and Sabina took her hand.

I opened the next, and the next.

In the third, my own name appeared in my mother's writing for the first time in my life.

I had a baby this spring. Rhea Constance. She has your forehead, God help her.

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