“No,” Arthur said.
“But Julian believed you understood grief.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Because he was right.
I did understand grief.
I understood what it meant to wake up every morning and realize that someone you loved was never coming back.
I understood the strange guilt that comes with surviving.
And I understood that sometimes a person doesn’t need someone to fix their grief.
They simply need someone willing to sit beside them while they carry it.
The next morning, I drove to the address Julian had written.
It was a small blue house on the edge of town.
I sat in my car for almost twenty minutes.
Then I walked to the front door.
I knocked.
A man opened it.
He was in his forties.
Gray touched his beard.
His eyes were tired.
And the moment he looked at me, I knew.
I didn’t have to ask.
“You’re Caleb.”
