Eleven hundred letters, most of them written between four in the afternoon and eight at night, which are the hours I was at a warehouse off Highway 99 for six years.

My children did not have a mother to tell about their day, and they did not have me either, between four and eight, for six years, and so five of them invented a correspondent and wrote to her eleven hundred times and hid it from me so I would not feel bad.

The letters are Willa’s now.

All of them.

She asked for them on the third evening and there was a bit of an argument and then Odile said, “No, she’s right, she should have them,” and that was that.