ADVERTISEMENT
My 12-Year-Old Daughter Cut Off Her Hair for a Girl with Cancer – Then the Principal Called and Said, ‘You Need to Come Now and See What Happened with Your Own Eyes’
I held Jonathan’s envelope with both hands. “I can’t read this in front of people.”
Marcus nodded. “Then let me read what he left with me.”
He unfolded a note and cleared his throat.
“If my girls ever forget what kind of man I tried to be, remind them by how you show up.
Letty will always lead with her heart. Piper will pretend she’s fine and carry too much by herself. Don’t let either one of them stand alone if you can help it.”
I covered my mouth.
Millie’s mother crossed the room and crouched beside me.
“I’m Jenna,” she said softly. “And I don’t know how to thank your daughter.”
“Our family fought cancer too,” I told her. “Letty watched what it did to her father. She knows what it costs.”
Letty flushed pink.
“I just didn’t want Millie hiding in the bathroom anymore.”
Millie looked at her and said quietly, “I hate that bathroom.”
“I know,” Letty said.
Then the men started talking all at once, each with their own Jonathan story.
He covered shifts.
He kept Letty’s drawings in his locker.
He brought my baked goods to work and let everyone think he’d made them.
“That man could not bake,” I said through tears.
“We knew,” Marcus said. “We respected the lie.”
Then Letty asked the question that made the whole room go soft.
“Did he talk about me a lot?”
Luis answered first.
“Every day.”
“Even when he got really sick?”
“Especially then.”
Continued on the next page
