The letter from Claire arrived in January.
Damien’s mother, the woman in France, the February visit that had been the most quietly significant journey of our marriage. She wrote in careful English, three pages, and the tone of it was tentative in the way of someone who has decided to try something they have been afraid to try and is doing it before the fear returns.
She wrote about the cottage town in winter. About the garden she was planning for spring. About a photograph she had found, older than the one she had kept of Damien, taken when he was five, sitting on a beach in a manner that Rose had apparently inherited directly, the complete physical commitment to whatever the current project was.
She asked if she could send the photograph.
She asked about Rose.
She asked, in the last
