“She saw you, Julian,” I wept into his shoulder.

“She saw you walk.

Wherever she is, she saw you.” And at that, Julian buried his face in my neck, and his tall frame began to shake, and the composure he had held so perfectly on that stage, before all those laughing people, finally broke.

The brave young man who had faced down an entire auditorium melted, in my arms, back into the little boy who had loved his sister, who had held her hand in a hospice room and made her a promise, and who had just kept it, seventeen years later.

Chapter 13 — The Reverent Stillness