I married a man in prison for money. Three years later his conviction was overturned — and eight days after he came home he put a black box on the kitchen table and said, “Now it’s my turn.”

And he wrote.

Proper letters. Four or five pages, both sides, in handwriting that got better over three years because he had the time.

With tiny drawings all up the margins. A bird on the windowsill. A cup. Whoever was sitting across the hall from him that particular week.

At the start, the caring was a performance.

I was being paid two thousand dollars a month to perform it. I knew exactly what I was doing and I would like it on the record that I was good at it.

And then at some point it stopped being one.

I could not tell you the month. There was no afternoon where it changed. It had simply already happened by about the second winter.

I started reading the case file. Properly, at night, on my own kitchen table after Theo went up.

And things in it were wrong.

Two authorizations in that bundle with no signature on them at all.