Chapter 21 - A Sealed Package Delivered To The River House
Late one foggy November afternoon, while my father was out picking up groceries, a courier truck pulled up to our gate and left a heavy parcel. The parcel was wrapped in thick brown paper, stamped with an official seal from the Federal Bureau of Prisons in New Jersey.
I brought the package inside, placing it on the kitchen island and using a pocket knife to carefully slice through the heavy tape. Inside rested an old, leather-bound journal that belonged to my mother, along with a stack of birth records from a private hospital in Boston dated twenty-four years ago.
Tucked inside the front cover of the journal was a short note written in my mother's unmistakable handwriting that made my blood run cold:
May you like
“Maya, if you are reading this, David was never your biological father... and the man who raised you doesn't know who you really belong to.”
I slowly turned around toward the front door as the sound of my father's truck pulling into the gravel driveway echoed through the house...
