Mom.”
”It is seven in the morning,” I told him.
“What if they came early?”
“Mail is not magic.”
He grinned.
“What if mystery mail is?”
I still remember him standing on his toes near the front window, watching for the mail truck as though everything depended on it.
Not the cake.
Not the presents.
Not the friends coming later.
Only that envelope.
And every single year, somehow, it came.
Sometimes there was five dollars.
Sometimes ten.
When he turned eleven, there was a twenty, and Adrian reacted as though
