It is a strange thing, being held up.

I had forgotten what it felt like.

For seven months I had been the one doing the holding — holding Evelyn, holding the house, holding the ledger and the schedule and myself, holding it all so tightly and for so long that my arms had forgotten there was any other way to be.

And now, on that field, in front of the whole town, someone was holding me, and my body did not know what to do with it at first; it took a few seconds to understand that it was allowed to stop bracing, to let go, to lean its full weight on something and trust that the something would not give way.

And when it finally understood — when I finally let myself sag against my brother’s chest and put down, just for a minute, the entire weight I had been carrying since November — the relief of it was so total it was almost like grief itself, a great heaving release, everything I had been holding back for so long pouring out at once into the fabric of a uniform jacket that smelled of travel and starch and, underneath that, faintly, unmistakably, of home.