GLOUCESTER — Not long ago, for the first time in years, Peter Anastas pulled out his divorce papers. His son Benjamin — like his father, a writer — was working on a memoir, and he had a few questions about the collapse of his parents’ marriage in Gloucester.

Tucked away in the file was the manuscript for a long-forgotten short story the elder Anastas had written based on the divorce. “I wrote that story and forgot about it,” he recalls. Finding it after all this time was a surprise, and a blessing.