“Did I do something bad?”
Daniel looked at him, and something passed over his face I could not name. Shame, maybe. Love, definitely. The painful kind.
“Caleb,” he said softly.
The boy looked up but didn’t move.
Daniel turned back to me. “I’m going to fix this.”
I held his gaze.
“See that you do,” I said.
Emma slipped her hand into mine.
“I’m going to fix this.”
We stood there in that cramped office, all of us carrying different pieces of the same damage.
My daughter, who had only wanted to spare a boy some embarrassment.
Caleb, who had worn taped shoes to school and never asked anyone for anything.
Daniel, finally cornered by his own conscience.
Me, with a dead husband’s name suddenly handed back to me in a different light.
For years, I had thought grief was the heaviest thing a person could carry.
I was wrong.
Sometimes it was the truth.
