Daniel looked around the room.

There were seventeen boxes against the wall.

Seventeen years of gifts.

Seventeen years in which his mother had watched her son grow older without her.

He reached for the final envelope.

Inside was a letter addressed to him.

The handwriting was uneven.

Dear Danny,

If you’re reading this, Thomas has probably convinced you to come into the house. I asked him not to pressure you. You have always hated being told what to do, even when you were little.

I want you to know that your father was not always the man he became near the end. He was kind when we were young. He taught you to ride a bicycle. He stayed awake all night when you had pneumonia. I don’t want the truth about his illness and drinking to erase the good things you remember.

But I should have told you what happened.

I was afraid you would lose both parents at once. You were already so angry, and your father was so ill. I thought there would be time to explain after he recovered.

Then one year became two, and you stopped answering my calls.

I made a terrible mistake by letting you believe something that wasn’t true. I thought I was protecting you. Perhaps I was protecting myself from another argument. I have had many years to consider that.

I don’t expect you to forgive me.

I only hope that when Lily is older, you will tell her that I loved her. I never got to know what she likes for breakfast or whether she’s afraid of thunderstorms. I wish I had.

I hope she has a happy life.

And I hope you do too.

Love, Mom.

Daniel folded the letter carefully.

He sat in the spare bedroom until the light outside began to fade.

At some point, Rebecca came upstairs.

She found him sitting on the floor with the boxes open around him.

“Daniel?”

He looked up.

“Did you send her pictures of Lily?”

Rebecca hesitated.

“Sometimes.”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you’d ask me to stop.”

He looked at the photographs.

Rebecca sat beside him.

“She wrote to me after Lily was born. She didn’t ask to visit. She just wanted to know whether you were both healthy.”

Daniel rubbed his face.

“She could have told me.”

“She tried, Daniel.”

He looked at his wife.

Rebecca’s eyes were wet.

“She tried for years.”

He wanted to argue.

He wanted to tell Rebecca that she hadn’t been there, that she didn’t know what it had been like to watch his father suffer, that seventeen years of anger couldn’t be undone by a folder of papers.