The post was shared forty thousand times in three days.
Then the letters started arriving.
Not emails. Letters. Handwritten. Addressed to Ethan Harmon, care of Willowcrest High School. The school forwarded them to our house in bundles.
They came from mothers who had lost children. From siblings who had made promises they were afraid to keep. From teenagers who had been ridiculed for doing something the people around them did not understand. From a man in Ohio who had worn his late wife’s scarf to their son’s baptism because she had bought it during the pregnancy and he wanted her to be there.
Each letter told Ethan the same thing in different words.
You made them see her.
Jack called three weeks after graduation. His voice was different. Smaller. He told Ethan he was sorry. He told him he had been afraid of what people would think. He told him watching the video of Dr. Okafor’s speech, which someone had recorded and posted online, had made him understand what he had walked away from.
