She pressed the tissue to her mouth and nodded. “I would be honored.”
One of the men near the back — Hank, who had apparently worked the line beside Jonathan for six years — rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
Letty was still standing by the window. She looked at Hank and then at the others.
“You really all came here because I cut my hair?”
Hank looked at her for a long moment. “No, kiddo. We came because the second Luis told us what you did, every single one of us said the exact same thing.”
He looked at me, then back at Letty.
“That’s Jonathan’s girl.”
The room went completely still.
“I can’t read this in front of everyone,” I said, holding up the envelope.
“That’s all right,” Marcus said. “He left something with me too. You read yours later. Can I read what he left with us?”
I nodded.
Marcus unfolded a worn piece of paper from his jacket pocket. His voice was steady and low and careful.
“‘If my girls ever need a reminder of what kind of man I tried to be — remind them by how you show up. Letty will always lead with her heart. Piper will pretend she’s fine and carry everything alone. Don’t let either one of them stand alone if you can help it.’ — Jonathan.”
I covered my mouth with both hands.
What Millie Said to Letty and What Jenna Said to Me
The room stayed quiet for a few seconds.
Then Millie reached over and took Letty’s hand.
She had been wearing the wig the whole time. Touching the edge of it. Looking at Letty across the room.
“I hate that bathroom,” Millie said.
“I know,” Letty said. “I could tell.”
“How?”
“Because you were trying really hard to be quiet and you’re not that good at it.”
Millie blinked. Then she laughed — short and surprised and completely real — and the sound of it did something to the atmosphere in the room, the way laughter sometimes cuts through the kind of weight that has been sitting too long in one place.
Letty smiled back. “Different doesn’t have to mean bad.”
Jenna crossed the room and crouched in front of me.
“I’m Jenna,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank your daughter.”
“Our family fought cancer too,” I said. “Letty watched all of it happen to her father. She knows exactly what it costs people. She didn’t do this because she was told to. She did it because she couldn’t stand the idea of Millie sitting in a bathroom eating lunch alone.”
Jenna’s face crumpled.
“I just didn’t want her to have to hide anymore,” Letty said, slightly pink. “That’s all.”
Millie looked at her. “I hate that bathroom,” she said again, but this time she was almost smiling.
The men from the plant started talking over each other then — the way people do when grief has been sitting quiet for a long time and suddenly finds a room where it’s allowed to move. They told me about Jonathan covering shifts for men who needed time with sick kids, about keeping Letty’s drawings in his locker and showing them to anyone who asked, about bringing my baking to work and telling people he’d made it himself.
“That man could not bake,” I said again.
“We knew every time,” Marcus said. “We ate it anyway.”
