My ex-husband invited the former wife he believed was still childless and miserable to his family’s Christmas at their military estate. He never imagined I would arrive on a government tactical helicopter — with four eight-year-olds who had his face.

old.

She found out the way anybody finds out anything, which is that the world is small.

Somebody said something at a funeral in the February of 2018 — a woman who had been at that courthouse in a different capacity and who had had four drinks.

And she tried to reach me.

Four separate times.

The first was a letter in the March of 2018, forwarded twice, to an address I had already left. I never saw it; it came back to her and she has it.

The second was a letter sent care of my old department in the summer of that year.

That one did reach me. A man called Teague handed it to me in a corridor without knowing what he was handing over.

I read about four lines of it standing up, and then I put it in a drawer. It is still in that drawer.