“Did Paige ever tell you she was happy?” I asked.

Natalie looked startled.

“In her letter.

She said Ryan made ordinary things feel wonderful.

She wrote about cooking together, about his terrible singing, and about a tiny garden outside their apartment.

She said she was expecting a baby and hoped one day we would meet.”

Harper had been in the world a few months when the letter arrived.

Natalie told me she read it several times, wrote a response, then hid both letters after Arthur threatened to withdraw support from her family.