Nathaniel set down his pen and studied me for a long moment. He asked if I was certain, if I wanted to sleep on a decision made in grief. I told him grief had nothing to do with it. I had done my grieving beside an empty row of chairs while my children sipped champagne. This was not sorrow talking. This was clarity, finally arrived after fifty-four years.

He nodded and began drafting. But as he wrote, he paused and asked a question that stopped my breath. Did I know, he said, that Edmund had come to see him alone six months before he died, and had left a sealed letter with instructions that it only be opened if the children failed to attend his funeral?