To me, my brother was his letters home. Even now, his lucid, correct handwriting remains more vivid in my mind than any picture.
I have saved most of Michael’s letters in an untidy, little-sisterly fashion: in cardboard boxes under my bed and in a wicker hamper at my parents’ house. My parents, I think, never felt Michael’s absence the way I did. He lived with them for almost fifteen years; I am sure they got to know him. Michael was born in London, and they dragged him to Australia, New York, and finally Florida before he left home. My father wasn’t a soldier or a diplomat, just a British doctor afflicted with wanderlust.
