They were at the boxes.

All of them.

At every house on forty-two miles, my people were out at their mailboxes waiting for me, which they had arranged over Darlene’s phone tree without my knowing — the Petersen kids with a banner, the Bakkes, the young couple, Krista with Rennie on her hip and a butterscotch of her own to give back to me.

Odell Prewett stood at his box in a necktie, a necktie, and handed me not honey but a card he’d made, and inside in a shaky hand it said only You saw me.

Thank you. And Emmitt Wilkes was at the end of the route, at the last box before the county’s road, standing without his walker, holding onto the post, in his good coat, with a folding chair set up for me and a thermos of coffee, because he wanted my last five minutes on the porch to be a proper sit.

I got out of the truck at Emmitt’s for the last time and I could not see for crying, and he poured me coffee with his unsteady hands, and we sat, and he said, “You know what you were, Verna?