Part 1 — The Question I Wasn’t Ready For
My brother Nathan asked if he could take Dad’s place at my wedding.
At first, I didn’t understand what he meant.
We had been sitting together (s) at the kitchen table for nearly an hour. Nathan had barely touched his drink. Every few minutes, he would glance down at his mug, rub his thumb along the handle, and open his mouth as though he wanted to say something.
Then he would stop.
That was Nathan’s habit whenever something mattered deeply to him.
He would begin with, “So…”
Pause.
Then another, “So…”
And sometimes a third.
Usually, whatever he wanted to say eventually came out.
That evening, it finally did.
“Can I do Dad’s job?”
I blinked at him.
“What job?”
Nathan frowned as if I were making something very simple unnecessarily complicated.
“At the wedding,” he explained. “Walking you down the middle
