Frederick explained everything in the pages that followed. Rosie had been born six weeks early and lived only three hours. The chaplain, Father Matthew, sat beside her and sang the lullaby I had hummed throughout my pregnancy. A month later he wrote us a long letter describing every minute, because he believed parents deserved to know their child was never alone. Frederick opened it first and could not bear for me to read it.

He told himself he would give it to me when I was stronger. Years passed, and the longer he waited, the more impossible it felt. He sewed the letter into the couch and promised to hand it over on our fortieth anniversary. Instead, he grew ill. His last page said that his silence had been love turned into cowardice, and he begged my forgiveness.

Father Matthew’s letter was in the bundle, written in careful blue ink. He wrote that Rosie had opened her eyes once and held his finger the entire time. I wept for an hour, but it was a different grief, one with warmth in it. I had spent decades wondering whether my baby had been frightened, and now I knew she had not.

The young man, whose name was Marcus, refused to take the couch back, so I let him keep it for his daughter. I found Father Matthew through the diocese, retired now and living two towns over. He came to my house with a tin of shortbread, and we talked for hours. I forgave Frederick, out loud, in the empty living room. Every year on Rosie’s birthday, the chaplain and I light a candle and hum the lullaby together.