Every year after that, I followed the same routine. I did not open them early, even when the winter nights got so quiet I could hear the house settling.

I kept them in the closet, behind my winter coats.

The 70th letter was about our grandchildren. Roy had listed the small things he’d noticed about each one.

Things he had never said out loud because he was too shy.

He wrote that our grandson Leo had his father’s temper but his grandfather’s patience with tools.

The 75th letter contained the account numbers. He had listed them neatly, including the small pension from the mill.

He had even written down the phone number for the local oil company we used for heating.

The 80th letter made me cry for two days. It was almost entirely a list of things he was proud of about me.

He wrote about how I handled the budget when the mill went on strike in 1982. He said he never told me enough how much he respected my strength.

The 85th letter actually made me laugh out loud in the empty house. He recalled the time we tried to paint the kitchen ourselves and ended up spilling a gallon of yellow paint on the dog.

The 88th letter was different. He wrote about his own mother, and how much he hoped he had been a good husband to me. I had to go lie down on the bed for three hours after reading that one.

I turned 89 last Wednesday.

Marlene drove down from Chattanooga. She made the lemon cake Roy always requested for my birthday, though she forgot the extra lemon zest he liked.

We sat at the kitchen table and talked about her kids. She left around seven because she wanted to get ahead of the evening traffic.

When the house got quiet, I went to the closet and pulled down the box.

There were only two envelopes left.

I opened the one marked 89. It was three pages long, written on the yellow legal pads he used for his union notes.

His writing looked very shaky on those pages. He must have written them near the very end, when his fingers could barely grip the pen.

I won’t share all of it. Some things belong only to a husband and wife, even after one of them has been gone for twenty-three years.

But the very last line of the letter made my breath catch in my throat.

He wrote: “One more, Clara. I saved the best for 90. I think you are going to make it. I always bet on you.”

I looked at the final envelope sitting in the bottom of the cardboard box. It looked smaller than the others. The number 90 was written in thick black marker.