And every single day I looked at that drawer and thought: not today.
Because posting it meant handing them a way out. It meant them getting to be the family who found out in time and drove down and held his hand, and me still being the girl on the porch with the holdall.
I wanted them to have to ask me.
He died inside those two weeks.
That letter said where he was. Ward and everything.
I posted it in the September, three months after, with nothing added, because I could not think what a person adds to that.
My father has never mentioned it and I have never asked whether he opened it.
My mother has. She told me in that kitchen that he reads it about twice a year, in the garage, and that he thinks she does not know.
She said: he keeps it in the
