And I had kept every scrap of it hidden from my son.

I had put the letters in a shoebox in the bottom of my closet.

I had done my crying at night, after he was in bed.

I had built, or thought I had built, a wall between Caleb and the fear, so that he could have, in the middle of our grief and our struggle, at least the mercy of not knowing how close to the edge we were living.

“You found them,” I said, and it was not really a question.