Edgar Grimes wanted to hear his grandchild's voice before he died, and he had no way to do it. He sat at his crooked table and shook the shoebox onto the wood. Old birthday cards spilled out. He picked through them with stiff fingers, searching for a phone number. The newest card was three years old. The last one his grandchild ever sent. He found a number scrawled inside a folded note. He carried the phone to the window and dialed. A recorded voice said the line was disconnected. He tried the address on the envelope next. He knew that street was gone now. They had torn those buildings down last year. Edgar set the phone down and stared out the cracked window of his little shack. The lopsided roof let in a draft. Rain had left a stain on the plaster months ago. He had stopped fixing things when the visits stopped. A child used to knock on that warped wooden door. Now nobody knocked. He had let it happen. He remembered the last fight. He had said something sharp about the child's mother, his daughter. She had grabbed the kid's hand and walked out. He never called to apologize. He was too proud, and then too ashamed, and then it was too late to find them at all. Edgar went through every card again, slower this time. On the back of the oldest one, a small hand had drawn their crusty shack in crayon. Below the drawing sat a return address he had never noticed. A different street. His daughter's old handwriting looped beside it: *from us, love you Grandpa.* His chest tightened. He didn't know if anyone still lived there. But it was a thread he had never pulled. He copied the address onto a clean scrap of paper. His hand shook so hard the letters crawled. He couldn't call a house he had no number for. He couldn't drive; his license had lapsed years back. That left one thing. He found an old envelope, a stub of a stamp, and a sheet of yellowed paper. Edgar sat down to write. He started three times and crumpled each try. Everything he wrote sounded like an excuse. At last he stopped trying to explain himself. He wrote only what was true. *I was wrong. I miss you. Please write back.* He signed his name and licked the envelope shut. He walked the letter out to the crooked mailbox and pushed it into the slot. For the first time in three years, he had done something instead of nothing. Then he stood in the cold and felt the fear settle in. The address was old. The people might be gone. And if the letter reached them, they might read his name and throw it away.