Clare brought out the letters then.

Forty-three envelopes, held together with a rubber band gone slack.

She set them beside the folder and kept one hand on them.

“You carried those through dinner,” I said.

“In my clutch since three o’clock.

I wasn’t letting them out of my sight.”

I picked out the one I had seen before.

Airmail paper, the address in my own hand, a refusal stamp in my father’s red ink across the corner.