This is something that harks back to The Old Country of Broads, no matter our ethnicity or class. Don't kid yourself. A woman with an engagement ring so large it can only be looked at through a pinhole in a shoe box will, yes, register for a silicon dish-rack. Yes, she will. Don't laugh and don't ask what other silicon the dish-rack matches.…

Prologue

I hold the old the envelope with both hands, pull it to my chest. I imagine it had once been laying on a cluttered countertop near my mother. Perhaps she was on the phone, busily chatting, so he reached for this small envelope, addressed to Lolly Morgan in Corning, New York. He wrote his four words quickly but decidedly as if they had been burgeoning all night until they had nowhere else to go but over the white back of a stray envelope. All I have now is the…