Chapter 4 - The Blue Bird Box
By sunset, there was no wedding, no reception, and no explanation that satisfied the two hundred guests who had come to watch me remarry. I didn't care. June and I went home through the back roads, where nobody could photograph us.
At the front door, she asked me not to turn on the kitchen light.
"Why?"
"Celia said she has people who can see inside the windows."
I locked the door, closed the curtains, and called Rebecca again. The police had taken a report and offered to arrange an interview with a child specialist. I wanted every word June said documented without making her repeat it to a dozen strangers.
In her bedroom, June climbed onto her bed and pulled a blue wooden box from beneath the pillows. Hannah had painted a little bird on its lid before June was born. Inside were hair ribbons, a tiny shoe, and birthday notes written in Hannah's handwriting before she died.
"Celia looked in here," June said. "She took the pink envelope."
I knew the envelope. Hannah had written letters for June's future birthdays during the last months of her illness, when she was terrified there might not be enough time. My wife had died of a sudden complication after surgery. That loss had hollowed out our home. Those letters were the pieces she left us.
"Which letter?"
"The one that said 'When you turn seven.' I told her it wasn't hers. She said everything in this house would be hers soon."
June's seventh birthday was six weeks away.
May you like
I opened the box. The pink envelope was gone. Under a tangle of ribbons lay something I hadn't seen before: a narrow receipt, folded into quarters, stamped with the name WREN HARBOR FAMILY SERVICES.
On the back, in Celia's slanted handwriting, someone had written: JUNE — INTAKE CONFIRMED.
