That was the detail that broke something in me.

He had kept copies.

A boy of ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen, writing letters to a little sister who never answered, and making a copy of each one before he sent it — not because he expected anything, but because the letters were the only thread he had left to her, and he could not bear to let even his own side of a one-way conversation disappear.

The shoebox was not a record of correspondence.