What I know is that he will have the documents, and nobody will be standing between him and them explaining what they mean, and that is the one thing I can give him that I did not have.

Because that is what this was, in the end.

Not a stolen letter — the letter was only the object.

For thirty-eight years I outsourced the job of deciding what things meant, and I gave it to somebody who loved me, which is what makes it possible, and she used it, first in small ways and then in one enormous one, and I never noticed because a person who is doing your thinking for you does not feel like an intruder.

She feels like the one person who understands.