I read it twice.
Then I folded it carefully, put it back in the box with the sculpture, and cried in a way I hadn’t allowed myself since the hospital — deep and unguarded and completely out of my control.
Charlie cried too.
We sat on Owen’s floor together, leaning against his bed, and for the first time since the lake, when I reached for my husband, he didn’t step away. He pulled me in and held on with the specific intensity of a man who has run completely out of places to hide and has finally, gratefully, stopped trying.
The Tattoo Charlie Had Been Hiding and the First Real Laugh Since Before the Lake
After a long time, Charlie pulled back slightly.
“There’s something else I need to show you,” he said.
He unbuttoned his shirt.
On the left side of his chest, placed directly over his heart, was a tattoo. Small and carefully rendered — Owen’s face, done in fine black lines, the particular expression he wore in the photograph from last Thanksgiving, the one where he was mid-laugh with his head tilted back.
