It was an acceptance letter from one of the best engineering programs in the state. I’d gotten in at 17, the same spring Ainsley was born, and I’d set the letter on a shelf and never touched it again because there were more immediate things to figure out.
I didn’t even remember putting it in that box. I certainly didn’t remember where the box had gone.
I’d opened it once, years ago.
“I wasn’t supposed to open it… but I did,” Ainsley revealed. “I found it when I was looking for the Halloween decorations in November. I wasn’t snooping. It was just sitting there.”
“You read it?”
“I read everything in the box, Dad. The letter. The notebook. All of it.”
The notebook was the part that got me. I’d forgotten about it entirely.
“I read everything in the box, Dad.”
I’d kept it at 17, just a cheap spiral-bound thing, full of plans and sketches and the kind of half-formed ideas a kid writes down when he still believes everything is possible. Career timelines. Budget projections. A floor plan I’d drawn for a
