“I canceled it.”
Marcus looked at her.
She ignored him.
“The one of the tribute. The photo you were showing up with Lily next to the coffin. You looked…”
Publicidad
“Carefully,” I whispered.
She nodded. “You looked like someone who had learned to stand because falling would hurt the baby.”
I remembered that day.
She ignored him.
Lily had spent most of the service sleeping with her cheek resting on my jacket. Everyone who hugged me said it was a blessing.
No one knew what to say when a blessing cried for a mother who could not answer.
Publicidad
“I thought if I came in at that moment,” Sarah said, “I would break what you had built around the loss.”
I missed a laugh.
“What I had built?”
“You survived, Harry.”
“What I had built?”
“I was eating standing by the sink because Lily screamed every time I lowered her.”
Sarah’s hand closed over the void.
Publicidad
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
“I’ve seen the videos Marcus found on the internet,” she said. “Your sister published some. Birthday. Christmas. Lily taking her first steps.”
I turned to Marcus.
“Did you let her see them instead of sending her home?”
“You don’t know.”
He moved his jaw.
Publicidad
“Every time.”
“Every time what?”
“Every time I said he’d leave tomorrow.”
The word was there.
Tomorrow.
I looked at Sarah again.
His face had become very unmoved.
“Every time I said he’d leave tomorrow.”
“The first ‘morning’ was because I couldn’t walk without help,” he said. “The next one, because I still forgot the words. Then came the days when my face looked different from the scars of the burns. And finally, because Lily’s first birthday had passed.”
Publicidad
He raised his sleeve to the wrist, although it was hot.
“Every day he spent no time made the next one more difficult.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
“Every day he spent no time going made the next one harder.”
“That’s cowardice.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I wanted Sarah to defend herself.
Publicidad
Part of me needed me to do it to make it easier for me to hate her.
He denied me that comfort.
“That’s cowardice.”
Marcus por fin habló.
“Puedes echarme la culpa por haberme quedado callado”.
I didn’t look away from Sarah.
“I already do it.” Then I turned. “But not for what you believe.”
Publicidad
“I already do it.”
“I told him to go home, Harry,” Marcus said. “In the beginning with kindness. Then, hard. We fought for that in hospitals, in rented rooms, in the airport parking lots. I bought tickets that she didn’t use.”
“How heroic.”
“No.”
Su expresión no se endureció.
That upset me.
