The first letter arrived on a Thursday morning in November.
It came in a plain white envelope addressed in the careful, deliberate handwriting of a child who had been taught to form his letters properly and was applying that instruction with the appropriate gravity. It was addressed to me, not to Charles, which I noticed before I noticed anything else about it. The return address was the school in Zurich, printed in the school's own letterhead font, and in the upper left corner Leo had added his own name in the same careful hand, as though he wanted to make absolutely certain I would know who had sent it before I opened it.
I stood in the hallway for a moment before I opened it.
The letter was two pages, written on the school's lined cream stationery in ink that had been pressed into the page with the focused determination of someone writing something they wanted to last.
