Noah read his twice, then folded it and pushed it toward me.

“I don’t want to answer yet.”

“You don’t have to.”

Sophia asked whether she could write questions instead of a friendly reply.

I said she could write whatever she truly wanted to ask, and that we could decide later whether and how to send it.

Ethan tucked his letter into the drawer beside his model airplane.

“I want to wait until I know what I’d say,” he said.

I thought of the thousands of words Daniel had used over the years to avoid one plain truth.