Chapter 4: The Walk to the Podium
I don't know how long it took me to reach him.
The aisle felt different than it had twenty minutes ago.
Like something had shifted in the floor beneath it.
Like the room itself had changed shape while I was sitting in it.
People were watching.
I could feel them watching.
But it wasn't the same feeling as before — it wasn't the discomfort of a scene unfolding wrong.
It was something quieter than that.
Something that felt, in spite of everything, almost like being held.
Theo was still standing at the podium when I got there.
He looked younger up close.
He looked like a boy who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time and didn't quite know how to put it down.
"I'm sorry," he said.
His voice had dropped to almost nothing.
"I'm so sorry.
I didn't know if this was right.
I kept asking myself — what if this makes it worse?
What if they don't — "
"Theo."
He stopped.
"You did exactly what he asked you to do."
His face collapsed.
Just for a moment — one second where everything he'd been holding broke through and then he pulled it back, chin up, jaw tight, the way young men do when they've decided not to cry in public and then find themselves losing the vote.
I put my arms around him.
He held on.
Behind me I heard my husband reach us, and then his arms came around both of us, and the three of us stood there at the front of that church like something that had been broken and was, in this strange and terrible moment, being pressed back into a shape.
We stayed like that longer than was probably appropriate.
I didn't care.
When we finally separated, Theo wiped his face with the back of his hand and let out a long, unsteady breath.
"He talked about you all the time," he said.
"Every single day, at least once.
Something you'd said, or something you'd cooked, or something Dad had done that drove him insane." A wet sound that was almost a laugh.
"He loved you so much it was embarrassing sometimes.
Like — genuinely embarrassing.
I used to give him a hard time about it."
"Did he know?" my husband asked.
His voice was rough.
"That you gave him a hard time?"
"Oh, he gave it right back." Theo looked at the envelope in my hand.
"He was good at that."
I looked down at it too.
My name was on the front, in Jack's handwriting.
And beneath it, my husband's.
The letters were careful.
Deliberate.
The handwriting of someone who had known they were writing something that mattered.
"When did he give this to you?" I asked.
"Eight months ago.
August.
We were watching a film — I don't even remember which one — and he just went quiet and said, I need you to keep something for me.
He went to his desk and came back with the envelope and the dress." Theo exhaled.
"He said the dress was his sister's — "
"He doesn't have a sister."
Theo looked at me.
I looked at him.
Something shifted in his face.
"He said — " Theo stopped.
Started again.
"He said to tell you the dress was his sister's."
The air in my chest went very still.
"He doesn't have a sister, Theo."
Theo's mouth opened slightly.
He looked at the envelope.
May you like
Then back at me.
"Maybe," he said slowly, "that part is in the letter."
