My wife left me with our six daughters for a wealthy man. Fifteen years later she texted to say she’d be at our oldest daughter’s wedding — and my daughter told me to let her come, because she had already prepared a special welcome for her.

I do not know where she is now and none of my daughters have heard from her, and I have stopped expecting the phone to do anything at all, which took about a year.

Junia and Micah have a place out past the reservoir. Willa is a dental hygienist in Bristow Vale. Cori is finishing her degree. Bess is in her second year and thinks she wants to teach. Neve is eighteen and works at the garden center and has plans that change monthly. Tansy is fifteen and is the funniest person in this family by a wide margin.

The letters are at Junia’s house now, in the same box, in a closet. All six of them agreed on that. Nobody wanted them thrown out and nobody wanted them in a living room.

I am forty-eight. I still work at Pilcher, days now for the last six years, which is the single greatest luxury of my adult life.