It was the stamps. Church Sheridan wasn’t in the habit of noticing stamps, and he rarely got letters anymore. Nearly everything he received had those pre-stamped things that read “PRESORTED FIRST-CLASS MAIL”. If there was a stamp, it was one of those soulless “FOREVER” stamps. Little wonder that stamp collecting had gone out of fashion.

It wasn’t just the stamps. The small package was yellow with age, the address handwritten in neat script. Still, the stamp showed the black silhouette of a soldier. The words read, Appomattox, With Malice Toward None, 1861–1865. It was issued for the Civil War Centennial in 1965, which made his receiving it sixty years later odd to say the least.

That stamp wasn’t rare. Church looked that up on Google. A first-class stamp cost five cents in 1965. A stamp dealer was offering one for fifty cents in mint condition. A new FOREVER stamp goes for more, seventy-eight cents, and you didn’t have to lick it.

There was no pasted forwarding address to this home. The address was his, though, several homes ago. Several decades ago.

He put the rest of the mail back in the box—junk: fliers for replacement windows, postcards from botoxed realtors. All that could wait for the rubbish bin. Church walked quickly up the gravel driveway. He flipped the package over, looking for a return address. Instead, he saw four letters in faded ink. A long-forgotten memory swept into view: SWAK.

His mother once told him it meant “Sealed With a Kiss.” But Church knew better. There was only one person who ever wrote that on his letters. His heart thudded. A Swiss Army knife! Could it be? The last time Church saw his father was sixty years ago.

Church’s father traveled a lot. Too much, his mother would say to him in tears over the phone. Church never knew what his father did. When he asked, his father would muss his hair and say, “I’m a businessman.” Church knew what a doctor did. Lawyers. Engineers. But a “businessman”? His dad just said he sold drilling equipment. Whatever that meant.

Still, his father brought back treasures. He’d return from trips with gifts: a wanted poster from a ghost town, an ounce of silver from Cripple Creek, Indian arrowheads—one sharp enough to cut Church’s finger. And there was the broken stock of an old musket. “That’s from Gettysburg,” he said. “Probably broke when a soldier used it as a club.”

Church believed every word. But more than the collection, he wished more than anything he could go with him—storming Normandy, flying in a bush plane over Alaska, even just a Red Sox game. The closest he got to Fenway was a signed ball. He thought it real until a boy presented the identical one in his class’s “Show and Tell.” The boy said the signatures were fake.

Church threw his into a pond after that. It was not long after his father had left.

SWAK, though, meant something else. His father had claimed he was going overseas—to Europe, on an extended trip.

“Switzerland? Are you going to Switzerland?” Church asked. He’d learned about Switzerland in school. The teacher brought Swiss cheese, chocolate, and a loud brass cowbell. She also showed a knife with a red handle and silver cross. A Swiss Army knife. Multiple blades. Scissors. Tweezers. A toothpick. Church’s eyes went wide. His heart beat harder when she told the class that all soldiers in Switzerland got one. I wish I was a Swiss soldier, thought Church.

His father said, of course he was going to Switzerland.

“Please, Dad, please. Can you get me a Swiss Army knife? I swear you don’t have to get me anything ever again, ever.”

His father chuckled, pretending to think about it, screwing his eyes, scratching his head. “Well, I don’t know, Church. You are rather young for a dangerous weapon like that.” It was an act. “But Dad, please, I’ll be good. I promise. I—I—I—”

“You’ll have a Swiss Army knife. That one,” said his dad. “I promise.”

He had a lot of trips to go on before Switzerland. And on those trips, his father wrote letters telling Church of adventures—none having anything to do with drilling equipment. A blizzard in the Rockies. An earthquake in San Francisco (which never made the news). And on every envelope: SWAK.

It had to be.

Church was at Cub Scout camp that summer. All Scouts had to bring their own pocketknife, but with his father always traveling—Europe still just ahead—his mother bought him the regulation blue Cub Scout knife. No saw, no scissors, no toothpick.

“Why the long face?” she asked after helping him clip it to his belt.

“It’s okay. I just thought Dad would have gotten a Swiss Army knife for me,” he said.

She knelt to hug him. “Church, Dad loves you but sometimes he’s elsewhere. Know what I mean?”

Church said he did, but he didn’t. Elsewhere could mean because of his travels. But he knew it was more than that. He’d heard them argue: Mom yelling about the family; Dad grumbling about work. One fight ended with her shouting something about baking all the bread, which was true. She was a great baker; so good that later she and Prudence Sloane opened a bakery in town.

Then she wasn’t around very much either. She and Mrs. Sloane opened a second and third bakery. The bakeries were doing so well they didn’t need the money anymore, but it kept the two divorcees busy. By then, Church was old enough to work in one. He could have bought a Swiss Army knife. He thought about once or twice. It wouldn’t have been the same.

After that summer at camp, Church’s dad fell off the map. His mother’s phrase. He wasn’t a spy or FBI agent or even a salesman. He was a bigamist, a word Church didn’t understand for years.

Twice his dad called, in tears, trying to say something—sorry, love you—before Mom grabbed the phone and told Church to go to his room. He heard her shout, “Don’t you ever dare—”

The postcards came for a while. Birthday cards. Christmas cards. Each with a crisp $10 bill, SWAK written on the envelope. Once, there was a letter. He didn’t understand it—something about being confused, things happening without meaning to. Church didn’t show it to his mother. The letter ended with “I hope to see you one day.” Church hated that phrasing. Not soon. Just one day.

There was the other family. It came out eventually. A kid in school, not trying to be mean, said, “Is it weird your dad has another whole family somewhere? I’d be freaked.”

Church wasn’t freaked, exactly. More hollowed out. He hadn’t heard from his father in a year. He once thought he saw him driving by a red ’64 Mustang. Church ran toward it waving, but it only slowed down. It didn’t stop. Maybe it slowed for a crossing kid. Maybe it didn’t. He wanted it to be his dad. He wanted a sign. He wanted… something.

Now, decades later, he stood in his kitchen holding the brown paper parcel. Old-school wrapping, brittle with age. No return address. He rattled it beside his ear like a child. Something clunked inside. He used a steak knife to slit the wrapping—carefully, preserving the stamps.

Inside was a simple cardboard box, its tape cracked like dried cellophane. Inside that, wrapped in cotton, was the Holy Grail of his childhood.

A knife with a red handle. An embossed cross in a shield. Blades shining after what must have been fifty years. The tent icon and the word CAMPING beside it. The Outdoorsman model. The very one he had held once at the Sportsman Show.

Church choked up. Now he understood why he’d never bought one for himself.

A note was tucked underneath.

“Dear Church,

I haven’t made it to Switzerland yet so didn’t want to wait to get you the SWAK.

I’m so sorry I can’t see you right now. It’s about me and Mom. It’s not about you.

It’s complicated and one day I’ll try to explain.

I think about you every minute.

My Switzerland visit must wait. That doesn’t mean this special knife has to.

I give it with joy and love. Use it carefully. Love, Dad.”

Church pressed the knife closed, feeling its weight. A lifetime late, but still—

Before he could finish the thought, he noticed another envelope in the mail pile. No stamp. Just his name.

“Church,

We don’t know each other. I’m your half-brother. I imagine you know the story. I’m from the other family.

Mom kicked Dad out when she learned. We didn’t know about you. I was curious but didn’t want to reach out. I found this box cleaning the attic. I was going to open it, but figured you’d been through what I’d been through, so I didn’t.

Dad handed me this package the last time I saw him and asked me to drop it in the mailbox.

When I saw who it was for, I didn’t. I’m sorry.

I almost threw it at him, but he drove off in his Mustang, and I didn’t want to scratch the paint.

Funny, the things you remember.”

Church ran his thumb along the red handle. Fifty years late. But it was here.

He folded the letters, slid them under the cotton wadding, and closed the box. He clipped the knife to his belt. It felt heavier than a knife ought to, heavier in a good way.

Outside, the wind rustled through the trees. Same sound as the day he’d thought he saw that Mustang.

He took one slow breath. “Thanks,” he said. Not sure to whom.

Then he walked down the driveway.