The detective wrote down my answer and stared at the photograph again. Then he asked whether I remembered what was inside the package. I told him I didn’t. It had been so long that I barely remembered the delivery itself. He said that was fine, because the package had never been logged as delivered at my address. According to his records, it had been signed for at a location that didn’t exist in 1999, and the signature on the receipt was the only reason he had been able to find me.
He showed me the photograph again, this time pointing to the date beneath my signature. It was the same date I remembered, but the address printed above it belonged to an empty lot now occupied by a grocery store. I asked what had been there in 1999, and he said an apartment building had stood there before a fire destroyed it. He then asked whether I had ever known anyone who lived there. I said no, but when he showed me the name attached to the package, I recognized it immediately.
It was my mother’s maiden name.
I hadn’t heard it used in decades. My mother had died years earlier, and as far as I knew, she had never lived anywhere near that address. The detective said the package had been part of an investigation into something that happened shortly after I signed for it. He wouldn’t tell me what was inside, but he said the original case had been closed because nobody could prove who had sent it. Then he asked whether my mother had ever told me to forget something that happened in 1999.
I told him she had. Once. She’d made me promise never to talk about a man who came to our house that summer, even though I had never understood why. The detective looked down at his notes and said that was the answer he’d been hoping for. Then he turned the photograph over and showed me what had been written on the back in my mother’s handwriting: “If they ever find the person who signed for this, ask him what the man was carrying when he left our house.”
