Before my 19-year-old son di3d, he donated his heart to an 18-year-old girl — after the transplant, her mother handed me a letter from my son that began, “Mom, there’s something you need to know about her.”

And in the November I finally asked her why.

And she said: “Because this is your house and she’s your business now, and I’ve had eighteen years of her and you’ve had none.”

And then she said the thing I did not expect.

“And because if I come in and sit down, you’ll have to be polite to me. And you shouldn’t have to be polite to me. Not in your own kitchen.”

I did ask her in, that day. She said no.

She has said no eleven times. I keep asking. I do not entirely know why.

Lena.

She is nineteen now. She is at college doing something with animals. She has Martin’s chin and Martin’s terrible handwriting and none of his character, as far as I can tell.

She came to my house for the first time in the August of last year. She was on her own; Katrin sat in the car outside for two hours and would not come in, and I have never respected anybody more.