Along with poking fun at me, she gives me puppy dog eyes that make me wonder if this is it. Is this the moment she and I finally hang out together? Our lease is set to renew in a few months. Maybe a good faith gesture wouldn’t hurt to ensure she re-signs?

“Fine,” I concede to her pathetically lovable stare. “I’ll go.”

“Yessss!” She high-fives me. Instant regret sinks in. “So, what’s in the box?”

“That? Just a hard drive.”

I almost forgot about the delivery sitting just feet away, although Leno sure has not. My little tan-and-white Frenchie with the jingly collar has been sniffing the box incessantly for the last ten minutes. I take a quick fuzzy photo with my iPhone and send it to my mom, Jean, aka Jean Rosen, aka The Jeaner, who is back in New York. Since I have yet to procure grandkids for her, she’s transferred the entirety of her Jewish grandmother obsessive tendencies to my dog instead. I’m sure she will love this picture of Leno investigating a package like a bomb-sniffing dog.

“Well, then, that hard drive is made of solid gold. Have you picked it up? That box weighs about thirty pounds give or take. Trust me. The elevator was out of order, so I carried it up myself with Leno on the leash. Most cardio I’ve done in a decade. Man, I really need to quit smoking cigs.”

I walk over to the box, kicking off my high heels along the way, and tilt it toward me. I, too, am shocked by its weight. Something doesn’t quite scream “two terabytes” about this über-heavy delivery, so I bend down to read the return label. It says,

Hancock Insurance

832 Wilson Lane

Pala, CA 92001

Hancock Insurance doesn’t sound like they broker external hard drives. And come to think of it, why is this box not slathered in blue-and-white Amazon Prime shipping tape?

But even more jarring than the mysterious info on the return label is that when I look closer, I see that the package is addressed to “Charlotte Austin.” That name hasn’t auto-populated the shipping fields for my online orders since I was married to Decker, and there’s no way I accidentally entered that name.

“Hey, can you hand me scissors from the junk drawer?”

Casey instead pulls a switchblade from her bra and cocks it open with the flick of her finger. They must not happen often, but I can tell she lives for moments like this.

I roll my eyes and quickly slice through the clear mailing tape. When I open the flaps, I find a bunch of packing peanuts and underneath all that padding a solid metal box with two identical keys taped near the handle. The box is locked at the hinge.

“What is it?” Casey asks, champing at the bit.

“I literally have no idea. It’s not the hard drive, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Ooh! Maybe it’s a time capsule. Open it and save it for me. I might be able to use it at an upcoming exhibit.”