With metal skewer in hand, I head back into the office. It takes a little finagling to find that sweet spot that releases the lock, but eventually I hear a pop and am able to lift the lid and reveal what’s inside. A pile of yearbooks, some baby clothes, an old Boy Scout uniform, a collection of wood carvings that I’m sure he made with his dad, and an old cigar box. No body parts or drugs or guns, just life stuff collected over the years.

I flip through a few of the yearbooks and find Ezra’s class photos. It’s exactly the boy I remember, only a little bit older. He played football, was on the debate team, made the honor roll, won medals in track. A pretty upstanding high school career, considering his dad had taken off when he was twelve. I certainly got into more trouble than he seemed to.

Putting the yearbooks back, I reach for the cigar box next. The scent of stale tobacco wafts free when I flip open the lid. The box holds a mess of photos. As I lift the top one out for a closer look, confusion and surprise knot together in the pit of my stomach. The photo is of me when I was little. I remember the dress made of thin red corduroy with yellow flowers on it. I’m holding a pink balloon in one hand and a half-eaten banana in the other. Flipping the photo around, I see my mother’s familiar handwriting: June 3 years old at cottage.

There’s another photo, a close-up of my mother holding a baby that I’m pretty sure is me as well. I flip the photo over, and sure enough, in my mother’s handwriting, it says June 6 months. There’s also a photo of May and me in matching bathing suits on the dock at Avril Island. The back reads May 10 and June 7 at Avril Island. There’s a photo of Ezra and me fishing off the end of the dock. The last one is a close-up of me at around age eleven, just my face while I look off into the distance. I remember May taking a bunch of these photos, telling me to ignore the camera and look deep in thought.

Sitting among the photos is a poem about summertime. I don’t remember writing it, but it’s signed at the bottom by me and looks like it was ripped right from one of my notebooks. There’s also one of my old rope bracelets and a thick lock of dark-brown hair tied with a ribbon. I have a pretty strong suspicion that it’s my hair and drop it back in the box with a shudder.