My Stepdaughter Had Not Spoken to Me for Five Years Until a Heavy Package Arrived at My Door

to keep my balance, crouching over the open box with the smell of those years rising out of it. I already knew before I pulled the rest of the blanket back. My hands knew before my thinking caught up to them.

An engine block. A V8 engine block from a 1967 Ford Mustang fastback, dragged out of a scrapyard in East St. Louis by a stubborn fourteen-year-old continue reading …