After a long time, Charlie pulled back slightly.
“There’s something else I need to show you,” he said.
He unbuttoned his shirt.
On the left side of his chest, placed directly over his heart, was a tattoo. Small and carefully rendered — Owen’s face, done in fine black lines, the particular expression he wore in the photograph from last Thanksgiving, the one where he was mid-laugh with his head tilted back.
I stared at it.
“I got it done the week after the funeral,” Charlie said. “The skin was still healing. That’s why I wouldn’t let you hug me. I didn’t want you to feel it through my shirt and have to explain it before I was ready, and then the longer I waited—”
