I spread the letters across the dining table.

Birthday drawings.

Homework with gold stars.

Notes written late at night.

In several of them, my daughter apologized — apologized — for eating too much.

In one, she had drawn a picture of the pigpen door, and a figure in a green military jacket walking up the driveway toward it.

“Why didn’t you mail these?” I asked my sister.

Veronica could not meet my eyes.