There was always a face up there in the bleachers.

It was just never the one whose blood he carried.

It was mine.

For fourteen years, it was mine.

And I want to be careful here not to make it sound like a burden I bore nobly, because it wasn’t a burden and there was nothing noble about it.

Every one of those birthdays and holidays and games that Warren missed was a gift he handed me without knowing it.

He wasn’t there for the first day of kindergarten, so I was — standing at the fence long after the other parents left, until a teacher waved me off.