And I did not come to prove myself to people who had decided I was guilty before they ever let me speak — that kind of audience is never really persuaded by evidence anyway; they believe what is convenient, and my guilt had been very convenient.

I came for one reason, and his name was Theodore.

Old Theodore Remington was the single person in that entire cold family who had ever treated me as though I mattered.

Years after the divorce, long after everyone else had closed the door, he had mailed one handwritten Christmas card to my Army post office box overseas — a few kind lines, in a shaky hand, from a man who was not supposed to be speaking to me at all.

He never knew that I kept it.