I had held onto those small mercies for eight years as evidence that at least one person in the family saw me.

And his letter, for all its apparent tenderness, finally showed me what those small mercies had actually been worth, which was nothing, because they had never once translated into action.

He had seen my sadness.

He had said so, in his own hand, from his recovery bed.

He had watched his son and his wife and his daughter grind me down for the better part of a decade, and he had felt sorry about it, privately, and he had done nothing, because doing something might have disturbed the peace of a family that was comfortable so long as I absorbed its cruelty in silence.

His sympathy had cost him nothing and protected me from nothing.