first terrified second. It was a steel lockbox, the size of a toolbox, dulled gray and dented at one corner like it had traveled a long way to get here. Taped to the lid was a second note, shorter than the first:
The combination is her birthday. You’ll know which one.
My hands shook so badly it took three tries to get the numbers right — not the birthday I’d made up for her adoption papers, the day she was found, but the one the foster agency had estimated from a
