I wrote it on a Tuesday.
Not because Tuesday meant anything. Because Tuesday was the day the supply order went to the village store, and the supply order was one of the three tasks in my week that I completed alone, without supervision, which meant it was one of the three times in my week that I moved through the world without someone in a position to watch what my hands were doing.
I had been composing the letter in my head for eleven days.
Not the words exactly, the shape of it. The problem with writing to Celeste had always been the same problem: letters could be found. I had learned that at thirteen, when I had written three pages to Celeste about a specific Tuesday in October and my father had appeared at my door two days later with the pages in his hand and the particular expressi
