So, at some point she had apparently managed to get married.

She stared at the occasional table and thought about that. She'd found a wonderful man, she'd collaborated with him, she'd fucked him, she'd had a wonderful time, they'd made a wonderful home together, and a wonderful baby together, and, really, what did it matter that she'd never finished her degree? She had a husband she loved and a son she loved and a life she always envied, until she shook herself a bit and remembered that it was hers.

There were thousands of other ways to do important work than in a Ph.D. program. She knew there were, because she'd been scraping up bits of them for four years, now. Little bits of editing. Little gigs science writing. Little publications here and there, and little bits of research—that's what her bedtime reading and the reading time she snagged in the bathtub were; really, there was no reason why she couldn't call them research. She was, after all, reading specific scholarly material on specific subjects for the specific purpose of doing original things with the material, one day.

But first things first, and the first things are eating, paying the rent, and taking care of loved ones. Her husband's research wasn't done in bathtubs; she couldn't interfere.

So she wrote:

Dear