Back home, I reread the first few letters as dispassionately as I could and scanned the rest, saving them for when I was stronger. It was not easy to hear Maddy’s voice on the page, her schoolgirl exclamations, her wise-wistfulness seeking to gain favor, love even, from someone who did not know she was dying. Wow . . . I could not believe my eyes! It feels so strange to be writing to you. I wonder whether I have made you up! Each page had one email printed on it, with date and time information at the top. Some were only a line or two long. They were in exact sequence. Maddy may have been an indifferent housekeeper, but she had inherited her grandfather’s passion for documentation and order. That, or else the messages were of such crowning importance that each had to be given its own page, pampered with white space, meticulously filed, read over and over and stored in their slot by the bed to keep them close to her and safe from me for as long as she was around.

Nor was it easy to hear Antonio’s voice on the page. You will discover your own ideas as you grow older . . . I am maybe finding out how different girls are . . . A lot of things in life happen without you intending them . . . The even spacing and nonnative order of his words, his lightly rolled r’s and soft b’s were like a lullaby gone bad, working the spell not of comfort but of loss. Reading Antonio’s emails, I was the young woman besotted with his gentle lecturing, his humor, the natural authority and charm radiated by speakers of other languages. I was the one who wanted Antonio and Antonio only to be the father of my children, and I was the one consumed with red-hot fury at him for forsaking us. He had entered Maddy’s life just as she was leaving it. Whereas I like my own company! Yes, Antonio. You always were sold on your own company.

An ambush outside his office. Follow him home. Spring myself on a family dinner. I indulged in such scenarios for several days, perfectly aware that they would never take place. It was not my style. Another idea, however, was forming. I spent a week composing an email, rewrote it, left it to simmer in drafts. Finally I clicked it on its way in the spectral manner of electronic messages, thinking this was all wrong, that such a letter should generate hideous grinding, scraping, crashing noises.

Dear Antonio,

Remember me? I recently found out that you and Maddy have been in contact. I think it was a bid for independence that led her to keep this from me. Suffice it to say, she has always had her own mind and of course I am proud of that.