The porch light from next door threw a pale rectangle across Monique's carpet. Ava watched them both with the solemn attention of a child who knows she has opened a door she was not meant to open and cannot close it again.
"But this person was supposed to be dead before your husband ever moved here."
Monique's hand closed on his wrist.
"Don't."
She did not explain.
She did not say whose handwriting it was.
She only stood there in her cream blouse in the failing Virginia light, holding his wrist as if she could hold back time itself, while Ava's bare feet made no sound on the rug, and the sealed letter waited between them like a living thing.
For a long moment nobody spoke.