Desmond was thirty-nine years old, broad-shouldered, wary the moment I introduced myself at his job site, clearly bracing for something he already assumed would hurt.
"If this is about Bennett," he said, before I'd finished my second sentence, "I don't want anything from him. Whatever this is, I'm not interested."
"He passed three weeks ago," I said quietly. "I'm not here asking you for anything, Desmond. I'm here because he asked me to make sure you heard something, and I don't think it's fair for either of us if I don't at least try."
He passed three weeks ago.
Desmond's face didn't change immediately, but something in his shoulders did, some old, practiced defense finally cracking slightly at the edges.
"I don't need to hear an apology from a man who's already gone," he said. "It doesn't fix anything twenty years later."
"It's not an apology," I said. "It's twenty years of letters he never had the nerve to send you. I brought all of them."
