The receipt showed he bought flowers before he disappeared

Dear Delyara, My brother has been missing for nine months. The police returned a box from his car today after deciding there was nothing more to examine. Inside were sunglasses, a charging cable, two coins, and a receipt from a florist dated the morning he disappeared. He bought twelve yellow tulips. No card. Cash payment. Nobody in the family received flowers. His girlfriend says they were not for her. We have called the florist, but the employee who served him does not remember. I have spent the evening constructing women from nothing: a secret lover, an old friend, someone he hurt, someone he planned to forgive. Perhaps they were for our mother’s grave, although he never visited without telling me. Perhaps he bought them for himself. I did not know men did that, but why should they not? The receipt has a faint water stain near the total. I keep touching it as if grief has made me a detective and every ordinary purchase might lead to a door where my brother is still alive. The police say the flowers are not relevant. To them, the receipt is evidence of nothing. To me, it is proof that on his last known morning, my brother expected to place something bright into someone’s hands.