He knew almost immediately.
That was why he began giving her strawberry shortcake bars.
He admitted he probably shouldn’t have.
He understood why it might frighten me.
But for those few moments, handing my daughter the same ice cream he had handed me decades earlier made him feel like the man he used to be.
The neighborhood ice cream man.
The keeper of small summer happiness.
And he hoped that telling Ellie strawberry had been my favorite would eventually make me curious enough to come outside.
It worked.
Near the end of the letter, Walter wrote something I eventually memorized.
He told me he didn’t know what kind of life I had lived.
He hoped it had been good.
But no matter what had happened since Maple Street, there was something Margaret insisted I needed to know.
Before I became a mother.
Before marriage.
Before divorce.
Before bills, heartbreak, work, responsibilities, and all the things adults carry—
