My parents threw me out at nineteen because I wouldn’t end my pregnancy. Ten years later I drove back with my son and knocked on the same door and I finally told them who his father was.

to.

I rang my father. It is the only time I have ever rung him about anything.

I said: Leo wants the letter when he’s older.

And there was a long silence and then he said: it’s in the garage.

And I said: I know.

Nobody has moved it yet. It is still in a toolbox in Ohio and I am still eight hours away, and that is where it is going to stay for a few more years, and I find I am all right with that.

There are three of us waiting on one envelope now.

That is the first thing in eleven years that this family has all been doing at the same time.