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The hinge gave with a small, profoundly unimpressive pop. That's it.

There were three things inside.

The photograph lay on top, and I stared at it for several seconds before my brain caught up with what my eyes were seeing. It was an old four-by-six, its colors gone slightly orange with age, showing two people sitting on the porch I'd stood on less than an hour earlier. The railing had been white then. There was no kid's bike chained to it, and someone had put a tomato plant in a bucket beside the steps.

The woman sat on the top step with her elbows braced on her knees, dark hair pulled back in a way that looked as though she'd stopped caring about it halfway through the day. She was laughing at whoever held the camera, head tipped back and eyes closed, and she wore an old coven training shirt with the same three faded keys as one I still had shoved into a drawer somewhere at Danika's house.

She had my hands.

It was a stupid thing to notice first, but once I saw them, I couldn't unsee it. The same long fingers, narrow palms, even the slight bend in one pinkie. Twenty-six years of wondering what pieces of her might have survived in me, and apparently I'd been looking at one of them every day of my life without knowing it.

It took me longer to look at the man sitting one step below her.

He leaned against the railing with his knees drawn up, but unlike everything around him, he was out of focus. The porch boards beneath his feet were sharp enough to count, and I could make out individual leaves on the tomato plant beside him, yet every time I tried to settle my attention on his face, my eyes slipped away and returned to my mother.

"River."

"I see it."

"Is that…"

"That's what happens when someone doesn't want to be recorded," he said quietly. "The photograph isn't damaged. He simply preferred not to be in it."

"How nice for them." I muttered in annoyance.

I tried again, fighting whatever made my attention slide away. I could make out long legs, the suggestion of dark hair or maybe light; even that refused to settle, and one hand resting loosely around my mother's ankle.

That was the part that made me turn the photograph facedown.

There was nothing dramatic about the gesture. His hand simply rested there with the careless familiarity of someone who had touched her a thousand times before and expected to do it a thousand times again. She was laughing, he was touching her, and there was a tomato plant growing in a bucket beside them.

They had been ordinary here.

For however long it lasted, my parents had sat together on those steps and lived a life nobody had ever bothered to tell me existed.

I put the photograph on the seat before I damaged it and reached into the box again.

The second object was a small brass key, worn shiny around the shoulders and completely unmarked. It was too small for a door and the wrong shape besides, more like something intended for a lockbox or chest. I placed it carefully beside the photograph.

Then I saw the folded paper beneath it.

One sheet of lined notebook paper, folded into thirds.

I knew the handwriting before I opened it.

Hazel.

Seeing my name written by a woman who had died before she ever got the chance to say it to me nearly killed me.

I kept reading.

If Danika gave you this box then I was wrong about her and I am glad. If you found it yourself then I was right, and I am sorry. You have had a much harder time than you should have.

There are things I can't put on paper. Your grandmother will tell you I was reckless and she will be telling the truth. She will tell you I was tricked and she will be lying.

I have made an arrangement. I chose it with my eyes open, on a Tuesday, in the kitchen of my apartment, and nobody made me, nobody deceived me and I would do it again if it meant I would have you.

Don't let her tell you I didn't choose.