Caleb opened Simone's letter at our kitchen table. I recognized the small pauses between paragraphs because I had watched her compose difficult notes throughout our marriage. She began by admitting that fear often wore the voice of expertise when she spoke to him. She had seen every risk in his plans and rarely named the courage that produced them.

She refused to apologize for declining the guarantee. She had reviewed his numbers, and love did not require risking our home to prevent him from feeling disappointed. She wrote that she believed he could build something sound because he was capable of hearing no, revising, and beginning smaller. Her last sentence answered his question without having seen it: “I have always believed in the man you can be when belief is not confused with rescue.”

Caleb placed both letters side by side. They did not create the reconciliation either of them might have wanted. Simone would never hear his apology, and he could never challenge her account. Yet the letters removed the convenient fiction that one had stopped loving the other.

By translating their words, I had protected myself. I told Caleb that Simone had asked me not to let his last words to her become his last words to me. He said he did not know how to be my son without feeling that I represented her side. I answered that I did not need him to perform closeness. I wanted a relationship in which we said our own sentences.

We returned to the crematory before evening. Caleb chose to keep both letters. In place of his envelope, he put one blue paper flower beside Simone's hands, something Ms. Alvarez confirmed was permitted. I watched him close the lid himself. This time, when the coffin moved through the inner doors, neither of us stopped it. The fire received no useful object, no unanswered letter, and no promise borrowed from someone else. What remained with us would be harder to carry, but it could still be used.