When my husband's high school sweetheart mailed him a birthday gift after nearly forty years of silence, I expected an old photograph or a harmless memory. In thirty-seven years, I could count on one hand the times he had raised his voice in this house. I waited for him to sit down for breakfast, to pour his coffee, to make some small joke about getting older. I told myself there were a hundred reasonable explanations for him to be defensive about the gift. Henry made a sound I had never heard from him in thirty-seven years, something between a sob and a prayer.