It was Dean.
Someone had sent him the video.
His message contained only five words.
“I should have been there.”
I stared at the screen for a long time.
I didn’t answer.
Not yet.
Aaron noticed the name.
“Dad?”
I nodded.
He looked back toward the auditorium.
Then he said quietly,
“He made his choice.”
There was no anger in his voice.
That somehow made it heavier.
At home, I placed Mary’s pressed flower inside a small frame.
Underneath it, I wrote the date.
**May 14.**
The day she bought the red dress.
The day she picked a yellow daisy outside the hospital and joked that someone should arrest her for stealing it.
The day we still believed she would wear that dress herself.
Aaron stood beside me as I hung the frame near a photograph of the twins.
They were eight years old in the picture, both missing teeth and leaning into each other.
