She’d never told Kevin his dad had divorced her in order to marry a nice Catholic girl who hadn’t been spoiled. She never told Kevin that his dad had wound up living in Burlington, Vermont, and that he and his next wife had seven children that Donna knew of, one right after the other including a set of twins. She’d wondered who in their right mind had seven children anymore, what with the cost of living and the state of the world.

Once, Donna had driven there. Only once, after she’d tracked down the town where he lived from the postmark on one of the last meager child support checks that he sent. She’d borrowed a friend’s old Toyota Corolla, spread a map out on the passenger seat, and headed to Route 93. Somewhere in New Hampshire the road changed to Route 89. It took a total of four hours to get to Burlington; she spent another two hours at the town hall, where she found his street address and learned his family’s vital statistics. By then her mom had died; she’d told her dad she had to go out of town for work and asked if Kevin could stay overnight. He was twelve or thirteen at the time, old enough that, if he’d gone with her, he would have figured out what she was doing.

The house was on a narrow country road; part of her feared her ex-husband would see her and try to have her arrested, though she didn’t know for what. Another part of her didn’t care. She stopped right there on the side of the road and stared at the crumbling farmhouse that needed a few windows replaced, a layer of paint, and a porch that didn’t list like the Titanic. A child’s swing set was in the yard not far from a small barn. A couple of black-and-white cows stood, staring at her. Donna supposed they didn’t often have company.

She left without going to the door; the place gave her the heebie-jeebies, as Aunt Elizabeth would have called it. But the visit had strengthened her resolve to make something of herself, to show Kevin they were fine without his father. That was when she started saving to start her business. Two years later, when her dad was dead, too, she did. All that time, the image of the trunk had stuck in her mind; it wasn’t long before it finally was hers.