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 he never gave it to me.

It is in that chest. It is the first thing in it.

And what it says is this:

***"Mare.***

***I can't help you. You won't let me do the one thing I'm any use at.***

***I've kept the pieces. They're against the wall under the shelf.***

***If you ever want it back I'll put it back together. It'll take me an afternoon.***

***R."***

***"If you ever want it back I'll put it back together."***

He kept the pieces of that cot for six years because he thought I might ask.

And in 2013 he understood that I was never going to, and he started making them into something else.

And the other eighteen things in it.

One letter a year. Every ninth of September, in an hour, in a garage, for eighteen years.

Every single one of them is addressed to Halley.

They are short. Some of them are four lines. The one from 2016 is about a bike.