Then the baby fussed, and Ethan took her out onto the porch to show her the rain, and I could hear him telling her about it in his flat, short way.

“That’s rain.

It falls down.

It does it a lot here.”

I laughed into my coffee, and he heard me through the screen and shook his head, and it was the first time in a year that any of us had laughed at rain.

Richard’s letter came Thursday.

One page, in the handwriting I had read on birthday cards for twenty-three years, asking me to write to the court about his character before his sentencing hearing is final.

I put it in the drawer with the other papers and shut the drawer, and that was the whole answer.