On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Mark — one I had taken on the porch the summer before he got sick, squinting into the sun the same way Daniel had squinted in his photograph.
I hadn’t taken it down.
I wasn’t sure I would.
He had been complicated.
He had been cowardly in one very significant way, and brave in others.
He had loved me, and he had kept a secret that had no good justification, and he had spent his last weeks trying to repair what he could from a hospital bed with a letter and a photograph and a doctor he trusted to wait for the right moment.
He hadn’t been able to fix it himself.
So he had handed it to me.
I looked at his face in the photograph for a long time.
“I’m figuring it out,” I said quietly.
“It’s not easy.
But I’m figuring it out.”
The ceiling fan turned slowly overhead.
Josephine slept on.
Outside, the winter light held.
—
*Some people leave us carrying more than we knew.
And sometimes the weight they leave behind turns out to be something we needed to carry — not because it’s fair, but because love, even imperfect love, asks us to be bigger than our hurt.*
