Our daughter's twin di3d at nine days old and we let her believe she was born alone — at her eighteenth my husband carried something out of the garage and said he had started it the night her sister died.

And she did not cry and she did not ask one single question.

And he said: "I started it the night she died."

And she put both hands flat on the top of it.

It is a chest.

Cedar-lined, about three feet, with a lid on brass hinges and a lock that does not work because he never fitted the barrel.

And it is made out of the second cot.

I took that thing apart on the eighteenth of September, 2007, and put the pieces against the wall, and I have not thought about them since about 2009.

He never threw them out.

One hour a year.

Eighteen hours of work spread across eighteen years, and the first of them was the night she died.

And I want to be accurate about what the first hour was, because it was not woodwork.

On the night of the eighteenth of September, 2007, at about three in the morning, my husband went out to that garage and wrote me a letter.