“Hello, Scott. I was just on my way out the door…”

He pictured her office. It was probably organized and neat, he thought, unlike the chaotic clutter of his own. He licked his lips for an instant, thinking how much he hated that she had kept his last name-her argument had been that it would be easier on Ashley as she grew up-but hyphenated in her own maiden name.

“Do you have a moment?”

“You sound concerned.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I should be. Perhaps not.”

“What is the problem?”

“Ashley.”

Sally Freeman-Richards caught her breath. When she did converse with her ex-husband, it was generally terse, to-the-point conversations, over some minor point left over from the detritus of their divorce. As the years had passed since their breakup, Ashley had been the only thing that truly kept them linked, and so their connections had been mostly the stuff of transportation between houses, of paying for school bills and car insurance. They had managed a kind of détente, over the years, where these matters were dealt with in a perfunctory, efficient manner. Little was ever shared about whom they had each become or why; it was, she thought, as if in the memories and perceptions of each, their lives had been frozen at the moment of divorce.

“What’s the matter?”

Scott Freeman hesitated. He wasn’t precisely sure how to put what was troubling him into words.

“I found a disturbing letter among her things,” he said.

Sally also hesitated. “Why were you going through her things?”

“That’s really irrelevant. The point is, I found it.”

“I’m not sure it is irrelevant. You should respect her privacy.”