…”‘Tell Chase I’m not mad that he’s not here. Tell him I know he’s scared. Tell him he can stop running now.'”
Amy unfolded a paper napkin from her clutch and held it up. The ink was smudged. You could see it had been folded and unfolded many times.
Chase was holding his glass halfway to his mouth. He didn’t move.
“Dad had pancreatic cancer,” Amy said, to the room. “He was diagnosed in November. He went into hospice in February. Chase visited once. He said he couldn’t handle it. He booked a trip to Cabo the week the doctors said it would be any day.”
“I didn’t know it would be that week,” Chase said. His voice was very small.
“I know,” Amy said. “Nobody’s blaming you for that. That’s not why I’m telling you.”
She turned to the groom’s father, Reverend Paul, who had folded his hands on the table and was looking at them.
“Paul was the chaplain on Dad’s floor. He sat with him every night for the last week. When Dad couldn’t talk anymore, Paul read him the sports scores and the weather. In the last hour, Dad woke up and said those words. Paul wrote them down on this napkin because it was the only thing he had. He gave it to me the next morning. That’s how I met his son, by the way. He came to pick his father up after the shift.”
The room was completely silent.
“I wasn’t going to say any of this tonight,” Amy said. “I was going to give you the napkin after the wedding, quietly. But you just called the man who held our father’s hand a con artist, Chase. So I think you should have it now.”
She walked over and set the napkin down in front of her brother.
Chase looked at it for a long time. Then he stood up and walked out onto the restaurant patio. Reverend Paul got up and followed him. Through the window, we could see the two of them standing in the dark. Chase was crying. Paul had a hand on his back. They stood out there for twenty minutes.
When they came back in, Chase didn’t sit down. He asked for the microphone.
“I’d like to try again,” he said. “To Reverend Paul. For doing what I didn’t have the courage to do. Thank you for not letting Dad be alone.”
At the wedding the next day, Chase walked his sister down the aisle. Their father’s chair in the front row had the napkin on it, in a small glass frame. Reverend Paul performed the ceremony. When he got to the part about “in sickness and in health,” he paused and looked at Chase, and Chase nodded back.
