I went down to the basement that same evening, the letter still shaking in my hand. The old chest freezer had come with the house. It sat humming in the corner, and I had used it for nothing but frozen vegetables and forgotten leftovers for nine years. I could not imagine how Edmund could have put anything inside it. He had never once been in my home. His words made no sense, and yet the handwriting was unmistakably his.

I lifted the heavy lid. Cold air rolled out, fogging around my wrists. I moved aside the bags of frozen peas and a freezer-burned loaf of bread, and my fingers brushed something hard at the very bottom, wrapped tightly in layers of plastic. It was not food. It was heavy and rectangular, wrapped and taped with the careful patience of a man who had all the time in the world. I pulled it out, set it on the floor, and began peeling back the plastic, my heart pounding harder with every layer I removed.