But I remember almost nothing of what either of us said.

My whole mind was in my coat pocket, on the envelope, on my daughter’s handwriting, on the woman driving away three states toward wherever she had hidden for ten years.

Noah chattered to his mother’s headstone, innocent and sweet, and I stood beside him holding a secret that was about to remake both our lives, and I let him have his quiet ordinary moment with her, because I did not yet know what was in the letter, and because whatever it was, this was the last hour of the old world, and some part of me wanted to give him that.

Children are wiser than we give them credit for, and I have wondered since whether Noah felt something that afternoon, some shift in the air around me, some tightness he could not name.