He held up the daisy.
Then he looked at the graduating class. “I knew people might laugh. I was afraid of it. But Mary was more afraid of becoming a memory no one talked about than I was of being embarrassed in front of strangers.”
Those words settled over the room.
Aaron turned toward me. “So I walked.”
The auditorium screen flickered. Mary’s graduation photograph appeared beside her name, followed by the words: “In Memoriam.”
For several heartbeats, no one made a sound. Then the applause began. It started in the third row, moved toward the aisle, and spread through the entire auditorium until the room was filled with the sound of people standing up for someone they had never met.
Aaron closed his eyes and held the flower carefully between his fingers. When he came back to me, I pulled him into my arms.
“You should never have had to walk through that alone,” I whispered.
