A Stranger Left an Envelope Beside My Bed on My Sixty-Second Birthday—Then I Found His Photograph with My Son

“I don’t know what he told everyone else.

I know what he told me.”

“He said he’d found help.

He said we could stop worrying.”

“He had found help.”

She winced.

I was sorry to hurt her.

I was less sorry than I would have been a week earlier.