When She Wrote Back

One of the pen names I publish under, Margaret Hale, writes a seven-letter drip to women newly widowed and another seven to people watching a parent come apart in late illness. The drip-letter has a register — it can name a space, use a small aphorism, declare. The reader signed up to be addressed by a voice that knows things she might not. Then a reader wrote back, and the voice from the drips…