"Everyone thinks I gave you a seat at my table," he wrote. "The truth is, you gave me one."
***
I sat on that bench with the shoebox in my lap and cried until I couldn't read the rest of the letter.
Monday morning, I walked into the break room with the shoebox under my arm.
It was loud, the way it always was.
I couldn't read the rest of the letter.
A few people glanced at me, and one of them, half-smiling, said, "Hey, you doing okay? Heard you went to the janitor's funeral."
Normally, I would have nodded, made it small, let the moment pass the way I'd let a hundred moments pass before.
Instead, I walked to our table. Charles's chair was still there, pushed in, untouched, as though nobody had wanted to move it but nobody had wanted to acknowledge it either.
I set the shoebox down and opened the lid.
