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 then on the eighth evening, Avram Loewe put a black box on my kitchen table.

Shoebox size. Taped shut, all the way round, twice.

And one word written on the lid in his handwriting, which I could not read from where I was sitting because it was upside down.

“What’s that?”

“It’s my turn now.”

I did something with my face that was meant to be a laugh.

“Avi. Don’t frighten me.”

And he sat down opposite me and said: “I have to.”

And then: “Because when you married me, Wren, you agreed to something considerably bigger than putting your name on a form.”
PART 2

The box had four things in it.

A hardback notebook, about eighty pages used. A receipt book with the carbons still in it. A bank statement from 2019 with four lines highlighted.

And every single letter I ever wrote to that man.

Eighty-one of them. In order, oldest at the bottom, with elastic bands round them in blocks of twenty.