But the heart of it I will share, because the heart of it is the whole reason I am telling this story at all.

I had to stop twice while reading, just to breathe, because the words kept blurring behind the water in my eyes.

The director sat across from me in patient silence and let me take as long as I needed.

Outside the window the same garden Nora had loved to look at went on being green and ordinary, indifferent to the fact that on the other side of the glass an old woman’s handwriting was quietly rearranging the entire course of my life.

I have kept that letter in a frame now, on the wall of the house her money helped me buy, and I read it sometimes on the hard days, and every time I am struck again by the fact that she wrote it by hand.