She did not stop. She wrote me three more times. She called my mother. She called my sister. She called Hannah, who told her, very kindly, that I had asked her not to pass on messages. She finally sent me a letter in the mail, handwritten, three pages long, in April. She said, in the letter, that she had been reading about "estrangement" and she understood now that what I was doing was intentional. She said she respected it. She said she loved me. She said she was going to stop trying,

because she did not want to be the kind of person who forced her way back into a life where she was not wanted. She ended the letter by saying, "I understand now that 'get over it' was the worst thing I could have said to you. I did not understand, when I said it, that I was asking you to get over a person. I thought I was asking you to get over an event. I see now there is no difference. I am so, so sorry for what I did — and how I asked you to forgive it." I read the letter three times. I put it in a drawer. I did not respond.