“You let me think you were just disappearing from me, Charlie.”
“I wasn’t disappearing,” he said. “I was drowning in private.”
“He wished somebody would just make them smile for one hour.”
I handed Charlie the letter without a word.
He read it in that hallway, still wearing half a clown costume, tears dropping onto the paper before he finished the first paragraph. For the first time since the funeral, I understood that his distance had not been rejection. It had been shame, grief, and a secret too large to carry without it hollowing him out.
