HEAVEN CLAIMS ANOTHER ANGEL
NATE
Every pew in the chapel is packed with people who knew Alfie, who loved him, who showed up to say goodbye. I arrive early because being late to this would feel like one more failure I can't afford.
Nick and Kat are near the entrance, greeting people as they file in. Nick looks exhausted in a suit that's slightly too big for him. Kat keeps her hand on his arm, anchoring him.
I hug them both, exchange the kind of quiet words that mean everything and nothing.
Mom is already inside, seated near the front. She catches my eye and gives me that look—I know this is hard, you're doing great—and I nod back.
I wasn't planning on speaking today. But Nick pulled me aside yesterday and asked if I'd say something.
So I said yes. Because you don't say no to that kind of ask, even when your chest feels too tight to breathe properly.
I take a seat in the front row, beside Mom.
The chapel fills slowly. Organ music plays softly—the kind of generic somber melody they always choose. I’m not sure Alfie would have been a fan of it, if I’m being completly honest.
I think he would have preferred ‘Here Comes The Sun.’
The service starts and a minister who knew Alfie talks about service and sacrifice and love. About a man who fixed things—radios, relationships, broken kids who showed up at his door. Others speak too. People I know, people I don't. Each one adding another piece to the mosaic of who Alfie was.
Then it's my turn.
I stand, my legs steadier than I expect them to be. Walk to the front. And take a look out at the sea of faces staring back at me.
I didn't write anything down. I couldn't. Every time I tried, the words felt wrong.
Alfie deserved better than a script.
"Alfie was more than a bookseller," I start, and my voice carries better than I thought it would. "Though if you asked him, he'd probably tell you that's all he was. Just a guy who really loved books and stories and fixing radios while minding his own business."
A few soft laughs ripple through the crowd.
"But he was more than that." I pause, letting the weight of it settle.
"He was a father to people who needed one.
Not through blood—through choice. Through teaching us that love isn't always loud or obvious.
Sometimes it's just consistency. Sometimes it's someone who doesn't leave when things get hard.
Who sits with you in the dark until you remember there's light. "
My throat tightens. I have to pause, look down at my hands.
"He was that for Nick. He was that for me. He taught me how to be a man worth becoming—not by telling me what to do, but by showing me what it looked like to choose kindness over bitterness. To choose grace over judgment. To choose love even when love costs us everything."
Mom's watching me, pride and sorrow mixed in her expression.
"I used to visit him at the bookshop every week.
Sometimes I'd help him organize shelves, sometimes we'd just sit in the back room while he told me stories.
About his time in the war. About coming home and not recognizing the person he'd become.
About meeting Gracie and learning that love could heal things you thought were permanently broken.
About building a life after loss—not in spite of the grief, but alongside it. Making room for both."
I have to stop again.
"He told me once that the people we love never really leave us. That they become part of how we see the world. Part of how we make decisions. Part of the voice in our heads that tells us to be brave when we're terrified, to be kind when we're angry, to keep going when we want to give up."
My voice cracks. I don't try to hide it.
"And he was right. Because Alfie's still here. In every book I pick up and hear his voice recommending. In every time I choose patience over anger. In every moment I remember that being good isn't about being perfect—it's about trying. It’s about doing the hard thing because it's the right thing."
I look out at the faces gathered here—people whose lives Alfie touched in ways big and small. People who are here because one man decided that kindness mattered more than anything else.
"Alfie taught me that love doesn't end when someone dies. It just changes form. Becomes memory. Becomes the way we live our lives because they lived theirs. Becomes the choice to be better because they showed us what better looked like."
I look at the casket, at the flowers, at the physical end of a life that was anything but small.
"Alfie told me to stop running from my story. To stop being afraid of the things that mattered most. To be brave enough to want what I wanted, even if wanting it was terrifying."
My voice drops, becomes something softer.
"I'm still learning how to do that. But I'm trying—"
The chapel doors creak open.
It's a small sound—wood on old hinges, the kind that happens a dozen times during any service—but it cuts through everything. I glance up reflexively, the way everyone does when someone arrives late.
And my entire world detonates.
Because standing in the doorway, backlit by afternoon sun that turns her into something holy and impossible, is Nora.
She's wearing a dark dress that moves with her as she hesitates in the entrance. Like she wasn't sure she'd actually walk through. For a second she looks exactly like herself and nothing like the version I've carried in my head for seven years.
Better. She looks better.
Real in a way memory can't quite capture.
Our eyes meet.
And everything just stops.
My heart forgets its rhythm. My lungs forget how to pull air. Every single coherent thought I've ever had just evaporates into nothing.
Years of distance obliterated in a single glance.
It's like touching a live wire. Like the split second before a car crash when time slows down and you see everything with perfect, terrible clarity. Like falling and flying at the same time, gravity losing all meaning because the only force that matters is the pull between us.
Seven years.
Seven years and one look from her still has the power to undo me completely.
My hands grip the sides of the podium. The wood is solid, real, the only thing keeping me upright.
My knees weaken and my vision tunnels.
The words I was about to say disappear. The eulogy I was holding together with sheer will crumbles into nothing. My brain goes blank—completely, devastatingly blank—like someone reached in and pulled the plug on every function that makes me capable of speech.
She's looking at me the same way.
Eyes wide, lips slightly parted, frozen in the doorway like she's forgotten how to move forward. Like seeing me has stolen every bit of air from her lungs too.
Her face is pale. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, like she's trying to remember how breathing works. Every mile I've put between us, every hour of therapy, every morning I woke up and convinced myself I was over this—all of it disintegrates in the space of a heartbeat.
The silence stretches. Lengthens. Becomes something tangible that presses against my ribs. People shift in their seats. Someone coughs quietly. The weight of their attention presses down. The collective awareness that something is happening, something unspoken but undeniable.
I'm staring. I know I'm staring.
Can't stop. Can't look away. Can't do anything except stand here and feel the full force of what it means to see her again.
Mom's concerned glance cuts into my peripheral vision from the front row. Nick leaning forward slightly, brow furrowed. The question forming in every mind around me—what's happening, why did he stop, who is she—but I can't seem to break the connection.
But I can't make my mouth work or my brain reconnect to language or any of the professional composure I'm supposed to be maintaining right now.
She does something then—small, almost unbearable in its familiarity.
Her hand lifts slightly, fingers brushing against her collarbone in a gesture I remember so vividly it hurts.
One she used to make when she was nervous or overwhelmed.
And then she smiles.
Small. Sad. The kind of smile that says I see you and this hurts and I wasn't ready for this either all at once.
It's unconscious, automatic, and so fundamentally her that something in my chest cracks wide open.
This is the girl I loved so completely it nearly destroyed me.
And I'm looking at her the same way I always have.
Like she is magic. Because that's what she is.
What she's always been.
Someone shifts beside me—Mom, her hand finding mine, squeezing gently. The touch grounds me just enough to remember where I am. What I'm supposed to be doing. I force myself to blink. To breathe. To break eye contact even though it feels like tearing away from gravity itself.
"Sorry," I swallow hard and find the thread of what I was saying.
My voice steadies slowly, muscle memory carrying me through. But her presence is acute now. Undeniable. Like a frequency I can't stop tuning into because she's rewriting every frequency in my body just by existing in the same room.
"Alfie taught me things I didn't know I needed to learn," I continue, forcing focus. "How to be patient with broken things. How to sit in silence without needing to fill it. How to show up for people even when you're carrying your own weight."
I pause, the truth settling.
"He taught me that grief doesn't make you weak. That asking for help isn't failure. That sometimes the bravest thing you can do is just... stay. Even when every instinct tells you to run."
Nora's listening. I can feel her even without looking. Feel the weight of her presence like gravity.
“One of the last things he told me, which is something I've been thinking about a lot lately." My voice catches slightly, and I let it. "He said, 'The things worth having are the things worth fighting for, even when the fight scares you.'"
The words land differently now. Heavy with meaning I didn't intend but can't avoid. I look down at my hands, then back up at the faces watching me. At Nick, who's crying quietly. At Kat, who's smiling through tears.
"He was a great man. And I'm grateful—so grateful—that he chose to stick around for people like me."
I step back from the podium. The minister nods, understanding that I'm done. I walk back to my seat on shaking legs, my heart beating too fast, too hard, acutely aware of Nora somewhere behind me in the chapel.
I’m aware that seven years just became nothing.
Aware that I'm not over her.
Not even fucking close.