Another had been blamed for damage caused by a burst pipe.

A retired gardener enclosed a photograph of a rose garden he had tended for twenty years.

“I wanted someone to remember what I made,” he wrote, “not only what I was accused of.”

Naomi asked Clara whether she wanted to read them.

Clara hesitated.

Sympathy could comfort her, but sometimes it required her to relive the worst days.

“One at a time,” she decided.

She read the letters with tea on Sunday afternoons.