"I don't believe in signs."
"I know," Emma said. "But I think she did."
* * *
It took her eleven days to write the letter. She wrote it longhand, at the kitchen table, at night, after Emma had gone to bed, and she threw away more drafts than she could count. Some were too long and explained too much, as if explanation were a kind of payment. Some were too short and sounded like a form from a dentist's office. One began My dearest Claire and she tore it in half before she had finished the second word, because she had no right to that, to dearest, to my.
Adam did not help her write it. She did not ask him to. But on the ninth night he came into the kitchen at midnight for a glass of water and found her with her head in her hands over a blank page, and he sat down across from her and said, "What do you actually want to tell her?"
"That I'm sorry."