There was no speech.
There didn’t need to be one.
Claire stood on one side of me and Eli on the other.
For a moment, I thought about how strange it was that Frank’s death had left me more alone than I had ever felt while also giving me more family than I had known existed.
Before we left, I handed Eli Frank’s old baseball cap.
His whole face brightened.
“Really?”
“Really.”
He put it on immediately.
I kept Frank’s wedding ring.
The warning was still engraved inside.
Maybe one day I will have the words changed back to the anniversary message he originally chose.
Maybe I won’t.
Frank loved me for forty years.
Frank also hid something enormous from me for nine of them.
Both truths exist.
That morning, I didn’t need to decide which one mattered more.
As we started walking back toward the car, Eli reached for Claire’s hand.
