The room had changed because she had entered it.
So had I.
I took the letter from the drawer.
Then I read parts of it aloud.
Of course she could not understand.
She slept through most of it.
That wasn’t the point.
I needed to hear the words in a room where Mark had once imagined sitting with her himself.
I read the part about the porch.
I read the part about her kicking beneath his hand.
I read the part where he joked about cabinet doors.
I read the part where he asked me to let her grow up knowing that her father’s final months were not only a story about illness.
They were also a story about love.
They were also a story about choice.
They were also a story about giving.
Then I reached the final lines.
Mark had written them directly to our daughter, even though he knew she might not hear them for years.
