Sabrina calls herself Sabrina everywhere now, on everything, and last spring she filed the paperwork to have Ava’s certificate corrected, because Derek had put a middle name on it that Sabrina never agreed to and had never used.

Ava’s middle name is Devon.

She asked me first. She asked me in my kitchen, sitting down, having thought about it for a month, and she said, “You can say no, and if you say no I’ll never mention it again.”

I said yes and then I could not speak for a while.

Coral Pike sends a card at Christmas and on Ava’s birthday. Sabrina reads them. She has not answered one yet and she may not, and I have said nothing about it, which is the hardest thing I do all year.

I heard from Devon in November. Four sentences, through the same account, from Arizona. He is a diesel mechanic. He asked whether I still had the barometer.