Neither of us attempted to compress twenty-two missing years into an apology.

Before leaving, she asked whether she might hold Owen someday.

I told her perhaps, but not because she had brought presents or letters.

She would be part of his life to the extent she proved reliable in mine.

Her face tightened with grief, then she nodded.

It was hard watching someone you were learning to love accept limits you wished you did not need.

That evening I read the sixteenth-birthday letter.