season2 .. Your Masterpiece Lives On

“You were the one person Julian believed could tell his story without asking Caleb to forgive him.”

I looked at the red dress.

Then at the photograph.

Then at the notebook.

“I don’t know Caleb.”

“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.”

His face changed.

“How do you know my name?”

I held out the notebook.