Life was going the way it had nearly always gone. Boring, and slow, and with no real direction, but it was going. She made enough to pay her bills, and take the occasional class, though she had no real goals. It was as if she'd been marking time, or killing it, waiting for something to come along that would tell her what it was she was supposed to be doing. Or, more accurately, not really waiting for that. More expecting it, but not with any sort of excited anticipation or eagerness. She liked her slow, boring life. She'd had enough drama as a child to last her a lifetime.

She stood in front of the closed closet door for a long moment, before she finally worked up the nerve to open it. And then she reached up onto the top shelf and moved things around until she found the shoebox, way in the back. Warily, she pulled the box down, carried it with her to her full-sized bed, curled up with her back against the padded headboard, and stared at it.

Her mother's belongings hadn't amounted to much. Her father had sold most of them in the days following her death, probably in preparation for his own. At his funeral, there had been a woman sobbing as if her very heart had been broken. Kira asked everyone there who she was, but no one knew. She'd stayed in the back of the crowd at the cemetery, and left as soon as anyone ventured near her.

It was only in hindsight, as a teenager, years later, being raised by her father's parents, that she'd begun to understand. Her father had been having an affair. Her mother had known that at the end. She remembered her words, "How could ya, Paul?" All the signs had been there, she'd just been too young to see them.

With hands that trembled, she took the lid off the shoebox, and looked inside. A black velvet box held her mother's wedding band and engagement ring. Another held a favorite gold necklace with a butterfly suspended from its chain. There was a stack of letters and postcards, all bound together with a rubber band, and it was that bundle Kira reached for now. She'd never read them. She'd been afraid to. Something hidden, deep inside her, made her nervous about those letters.