He glanced at the top, then looked back at the cardboard boy.
His expression changed.
“Where did you get this?”
“It belonged to him,” Emma answered.
William examined the paper again.
I recognized the handwriting.
Suddenly, I understood why Emma had been searching through her brother’s belongings three nights earlier.
“That’s a private letter,” William said quietly.
“It was written to him. I think that makes it his.”
The gym fell silent.
William looked toward me.
“Melinda, did you know about this?”
I stood, but Emma answered first.
“Mom knew I was bringing him. She didn’t know about the letter.”
“Emma, perhaps we should discuss this privately.”
“I tried discussing it privately.”
William said nothing.
Emma faced the microphone.
“His name was Felix. And he wasn’t my boyfriend.”
She paused.
“He was my twin brother.”
A murmur spread through the gym.
“Wait, Felix?” someone whispered.
Emma continued.
“He was supposed to graduate with us today. But he died two years ago.”
The girl recording lowered her phone.
My daughter rested one hand on the cardboard shoulder.
“Some of you remember him. Some probably don’t. But he went here. He sat in these classrooms. He did the same homework we did.”
I stared at Felix’s smiling face.
The photograph had been taken shortly before his final hospitalization. His hair was thinner and his cheeks pale, but he was grinning because Emma had said something ridiculous.
I remembered that afternoon perfectly.
Felix was born with a heart condition. For years, we managed medication, appointments, and hospital stays while trying to give both children an ordinary childhood.
During sophomore year, his health deteriorated.
He missed weeks of school, sometimes months. Teachers sent assignments home, and Emma carried his completed work back.
Even exhausted, he insisted on keeping up.
“I can’t let Emma beat me at everything,” he’d joke.
She usually answered, “Too late.”
They’d competed since kindergarten.
Who could run faster. Who could finish books first. Who earned better grades.
Eventually, who would cross the graduation stage first.
Felix insisted that being born seven minutes earlier entitled him to go first.
Emma argued alphabetical order would settle it.
Neither admitted they simply wanted to walk together.
After a difficult hospital appointment, Felix once asked Emma to bring him the school’s graduation information.
He spread the pages across his blanket.
“Think they’ll let me walk with a chair if I’m too tired?”
“Obviously,” Emma answered.
“And if they don’t?”
“I’ll push you across myself.”
Felix laughed.
“Then make sure you don’t crash me into the principal.”
I’d laughed with them.
I couldn’t have imagined how desperately I’d someday wish that conversation had become reality.
Felix died six months later.
He was 16.
For weeks, Emma barely spoke.
She attended school, completed assignments, and helped around the house. But I frequently found her sitting on Felix’s bedroom floor, surrounded by belongings she couldn’t put away.
Sometimes she searched through his notebooks.
Sometimes she simply sat.
I tried not to rush her grief.
I was struggling with mine.
