It just did not arrive.

Jessi waited four months for an answer.

And in July, when Leo was a year old, she sat down and drew a line under it, and the way she described that to me — two years later, in a completely level voice, which is how she says the worst things — was this:

“I had a return-to-sender with your mother’s handwriting on it saying you’d chosen the Army, and I had a certified letter to your own unit with a signature on it and no reply.

That’s two.