Inside was more cash than I’d ever held at once — banded stacks, the kind you see in movies, not garages — and beneath the money, a thick envelope with one word written on the front in careful handwriting: Marcus.
My name. Someone who had never met me, as far as I knew, had written my name on an envelope and left it in a trunk on the one day of the year they could be certain I’d open it.
I called Danny, my shop manager, told him I was sick, and drove home before I opened it. I couldn’t do this standing in a garage bay with Lori’s birthday balloons still taped to the office window.
I sat in my truck in my own driveway and read it twice before I believed it.
