My son died in an accident at sixteen. My husband, Sam, never shed a tear at the hospital or the funeral. He went back to work three days later and spoke about the boy as if the facts were already filed. Our family fell apart under the silence. We divorced within the year. Sam remarried, and twelve years later he died. Days after the service, his wife came to see me. She said it was time I knew the truth. Sam had kept a locked drawer in the garage.

She set a cardboard box on my kitchen table. Inside were twelve years of letters, one for every Sunday, written to our son. He had dated each one. He described the weather, the football scores, the job he hated, and the apology he never said out loud at the graveside. He wrote that he had been the one who insisted the boy take the car that night, and that the guilt had frozen him in front of other people. The tears, he wrote, only came when the house was empty.

His second wife said she had found the box while clearing the garage. She had read enough to understand why he went quiet every Sunday afternoon and returned with red eyes. She had not known the boy’s name until then. She asked if I wanted the letters. I said yes. She left them and did not stay for coffee.

I sat with the box until the light changed. The last letter was dated the week before he died. It said he was sorry he had made me carry the grief alone, and that he had been talking to our son the whole time. I put the letters in the drawer where I keep the boy’s school pictures. The man who never cried in front of me had been writing to him for twelve years.