I'm running out of days, and you're still wasting yours worrying about strangers.
I sat beside the window.
For a moment, I could almost hear Ethan laughing in the next room.
I imagined him teasing Caleb.
Daring him.
Telling him not to be so serious.
Then I thought about the boy who wore a red dress to my son's funeral.
The boy my husband almost threw out.
The boy who stood trembling before two hundred people and told the truth about my son's fear.
And the man he'd become.
I smiled through tears.
The day we buried Ethan, I thought a red dress was an insult to his memory.
I didn't know it represented a promise made during one of the last good afternoons of his life.
I didn't know my son had been hiding his fear to protect us.
And I didn't know his best friend would spend the next decade turning that final lesson into kindness for strangers.
