With love, always,
Ruth
Natalie read it four times. Then she put it down on top of the others and sat with her hands flat on the table on either side of it, as if to keep it from blowing away.
When Adam and Emma came home at eight-thirty, she was still sitting there. Emma stopped in the doorway with her cello case on her back. Adam set down his keys.
"What is it?" he said.
Natalie held out the letter. He took it and read it standing up, and then he handed it, after a moment's hesitation, to Emma, who read it too, her lips moving slightly the way they did when she read something important. When she was done, Emma looked up at her mother.