All I had brought with me were three suitcases of clothes and two cardboard boxes of my father’s old things.

My father had died five years ago after a long, quiet retirement in Maine.

He had been an accountant, a man who kept every receipt and utility bill in neat folders.

I went to the closet and pulled out the larger of the two boxes.

It was heavy, the tape on the bottom dried and peeling.

I dragged it to the kitchen table and cut the tape with a butter knife.

The smell of old paper and dust filled the small room.

Inside were tax documents from the nineties, old bank statements, and folders labeled with his handwriting.

Perhaps there was an old savings account in my name that he had set up when I was a child.

I began sorting through the folders.

Most of them were useless.

Paid invoices for plumbing repairs from 1998.

An old car registration.

I reached the bottom of the box and found a thick, black leather binder.

I didn’t remember seeing it before.

I opened it.