The note was signed in my handwriting. I knew it immediately because the way I cross my “t” is something I’ve done since I was a girl. I called the rental company back and asked whether they had a copy of the driver’s license used by the second driver. The woman said they did, but she wasn’t allowed to send it to me. She could tell me the address on it, though. It was my old address — the house I sold in 2014. I asked who the license belonged to. She said she couldn’t confirm the name, but the driver’s first initial and last name matched what she’d already read to me. Then she said the person had rented from them before, always using the same account.
I drove to the address because I still had the key from the old house. Someone was living there. A woman in her forties opened the door and looked at me like she had been expecting me. I asked whether she’d rented a Malibu in September. She said yes, but she wasn’t the one who damaged it. I asked who was driving. She said it was a man she’d been seeing, and when I gave her the name from the rental agreement, she shook her head. “That’s not his real name.” Then she went inside and brought me a folder. Inside was a copy of the rental agreement, the same note I’d been told about, and a photograph of the second driver. I knew the man in the photograph.
He was my younger brother, who had been dead since 2019. I told her that, and she stared at me before saying he’d come to the house three times that summer. I asked what he wanted. She said he kept asking whether I’d ever found “the blue box.” I had no idea what she meant. Then she turned the photograph over. There was a date written on the back — September 14, 2024 — five years after my brother’s funeral. Underneath it, in his handwriting, were six words:
“She still doesn’t know where I put it.”
