I was stacking birch when the truck came crunching up the gravel behind a car I recognized. Five years of silence, and suddenly my son stood at the bottom of my porch steps, smiling as though nothing had happened. Kendra said they had been worried about me, especially after Odalys died. Then she casually mentioned they had already given up their lease because I had plenty of room. Within minutes, she was walking through my sister’s cabin like an appraiser, opening closets and asking what waterfront property was worth. “At your age,” she said, “you should understand the value of your assets.”

I made coffee and said nothing. Anything I said on that porch would have been twisted into evidence that I was difficult. That night, while searching through a study drawer, I found a shoebox beneath old receipts, beside my sister’s glasses resting on a seed catalogue. Inside were forty letters. Every single one was addressed to me in Odalys’s handwriting. Every envelope had been returned. Kendra’s name appeared repeatedly on the forwarding markings. My sister had written to me every month for five years, and every letter had been sent back. She had died believing I had simply chosen never to answer her.