Then Samantha reached down into the bottom of the box and picked up my old leather notebook, and my chest went tight.

“Samantha,” I said.

“Wait.” She stopped, and looked at me, and in her eyes was a question, asking my permission to go on.

That notebook was the most private thing I owned.

It held the entries I had written to myself over the years, alone, late at night, the small private griefs of raising six daughters without their mother, things I had never spoken aloud to anyone.

I wanted to tell her to put it back, to close the box, to leave that last most tender part of it in the dark where it had always lived.