“I wish . . .” Cora’s voice startles Esther, and she hesitates a moment, so Esther knocks her forehead against the soft skin of Cora’s neck, not sure whether she is reassuring or seeking reassurance. Regardless, Cora is warm there. “I’m sorry. I wish I understood enough to help.”

Esther wishes she did too. Esther wishes she had better language for what she was feeling, or any language at all. She wishes she didn’t feel so close to some wretched, adolescent cliché—nobody understands me. When Esther was an adolescent, though, Anais had seemed to understand her, in a way so complete and novel that Esther had felt a window open between their two lives. The hubris of this, in retrospect, is humiliating. Still, Esther takes a wavering breath and presses her mouth to the hot, thin skin just below Cora’s jaw, where she can feel Cora’s pulse beating against her lips. Still she says, “It’s all right, that’s all right,” and then “I’m glad you’re here.” After a moment, Cora begins to stroke her hair.

* * *

Cora suggests they go to the Smithsonian that afternoon, but Esther returns to the library. She doesn’t explain herself, though Cora also doesn’t try to make her. She pulls Box 31 again, Folder C. She lifts that letter. Isn’t it strange that she wants to read it again? But Esther wants to make herself know it.

There is another letter under it in the folder, and Esther lifts it only because the handwriting is unfamiliar.

The tag on it designates the sender as Obel, Emily. And Esther scoffs, a sound that catches roughly in her throat. She looks at the librarian with his curly head bent over his keyboard. She could laugh at him. You ass, she thinks, you filed it wrong.

A

I have been thinking of you very often since we last spoke. I am sorry that it took me so long to write, and there is more that I would like to say to you than I think I can say. I hope that Trudy and Ben are well, and that Leonard is well also, and that you are the very best of all of them.

I have been thinking of your last story without stop since I read it. Between you and it, that is a lot of my mind you have occupied. I think the last story was like an egg. That is not a metaphor I’m going to explain to you. I am trying my hand at them now too, and if you can tell me how it was like an egg and you are right, then maybe I will tell you more of what I thought of it.

I also want you to know that you were very beautiful the last time I saw you. The silver in your hair is more becoming than you think it is, but more than that, I don’t think you know how well you have made yourself from yourself. I think you would be much happier if you knew how clearly I am able to see you. Sometimes I feel it is just me who really knows you.