That it had already been answered.

That the answer was, at that very moment, putting on a pressed dress uniform a few miles away, and coming for me.

I think about the physical fact of that letter more than almost anything else in this whole story.

Twelve pages.

You have to understand what twelve pages meant, for Evelyn, that spring.

Her hands shook so badly by then that she could barely hold a teacup steady; writing had become an ordeal for her, slow and effortful, a thing she could only manage in short bursts before the tremor forced the pen down and she had to rest her hand in her lap and wait for it to quiet.

So twelve pages was not an afternoon’s work for her.