Daniel sat for a long time without speaking.

Then he told me he remembered Thomas making him return a toy he had borrowed without permission.

“Dad said wanting something didn’t make it mine,” he recalled.

We both laughed softly at the obvious connection.

Daniel asked for a copy of the letter.

I made one for him, but kept the original.

After he left, I looked at Thomas’s handwriting again and felt a kind of gratitude I hadn’t expected.

Even from the past, his love invited me to live in the present.