Chapter 5: The Keeper of Softer Truths

January before Ba’s accident

The next chapter is up.
January before Ba’s accident — an envelope she can’t bring herself to open, the weight of something unsaid, and the one person she always trusted with the truths she couldn’t ask anyone else: Uncle Paul.

This chapter returns to the rooftops, the stories, and the man who talked about ghosts like they weren’t gone.

She hadn’t called him yet. Or Kara.
The silence felt strange and too heavy — like even her purse knew something she wasn’t ready to say aloud.

Inside it, one thin envelope sat heavier than a brick.

Uncle Paul had always been the keeper of the softer truths.

He taught English and drama at Rockford High for forty years, turning awkward kids into Shakespearean lovers and spotlight villains. He spoke in metaphors even offstage — the kind of man who poured emotion into a whiskey glass and paused for effect in everyday conversation.

He had come out quietly when she and Kara were in their twenties. Before that, Calvin had just been his “roommate.” Back then nobody talked about being gay; HIV was a shadow people pretended not to see. Some whispered. Some stopped calling. But she and Kara never cared. He was Paul — dramatic, funny, theatrical, soft where the world was hard.

He took them to Sunday brunches in the Village, introduced them to his eccentric friends, ordered cheeses they couldn’t pronounce, bought them drinks they were too young to appreciate. And he was always — always — there.

For seven years she and her husband lived next door to him and Calvin. Paul would sit on their shared rooftop deck in a robe, angel statues tucked into whiskey-barrel planters overflowing with basil and petunias. He’d tip his glass toward her and say, “Honey, when I’m gone, these’ll be yours.” He said it like he was passing down heirlooms, not glorified plaster from Canal Street.

One night, after too many stories and too much wine, she laughed so hard she cried.
Paul raised his glass and shouted, “Calvin, fill her glass — we’ve got another believer!” Calvin topped it to the rim, grinning, while Paul launched into a story about Elle’s first heartbreak. For a moment, the three of them hovered in that rooftop glow — the city pulsing below, laughter rising into the warm night.

From that roof you could see the cruise ships sliding down the Hudson, bracketed by the Empire State Building and the quiet grid of lights stretching out forever. On clear nights, the skyline looked like it was holding its breath. Every Fourth of July they threw a blowout across both apartments — savories at Paul and Calvin’s, desserts at hers — timing a toast to the big chrysanthemum burst when the sky went white.

Those were some of the best years — the dinners, the drinks, the nights that ended in stories about her mother.

And she still hadn’t told Kara about the envelope.

The words never seemed to come.

Paul had known Elle differently. Not just as a sister — as someone who saw him when the world didn’t.

He told them how she sang while she ironed.

How she watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s every time it aired.

How once, just to make their little brother laugh, she made a cake entirely out of Jell-O.

And then he’d get quiet, glass in hand, staring at something that wasn’t there anymore.

Sometimes he even said he talked to her.

Once, after too much wine, he told her Elle had appeared in a dream — wearing the same coat she died in.

The purse shifted against her hip, the envelope whispering its reminder. She wished he could tell her again what he used to believe: that Elle had held on long enough for the baby to take a breath.

She needed that kind of faith.

Not from a priest.
Not from her therapist.
Not even from her father.

But from Paul.

Because Paul didn’t talk about ghosts like they were gone.
He talked about them like they were just out of reach.

He used to say, “Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was redirected to something better.” He’d pause, sip, then add, “And better doesn’t mean easier, honey. It just means truer.”

It always sounded like wishful thinking — except he never said it that way. He said it like someone who had lived it. Someone broken, betrayed, loved deeply, and still able to see joy on the other side.

People talk about moving on like it’s an upgrade.
But sometimes moving on just means recognizing your ghosts when they come back dressed as something else.

She didn’t know if she believed in “better.”
Not yet.

But she believed in Paul.

And she really needed him to remember.

The strap of her purse dug into her shoulder — a reminder she was still carrying it, and everything inside.

Kara didn’t know. Not yet.

She kept telling herself she’d bring it up when the moment felt right.
But lately every moment felt wrong.

She could almost hear Paul in her head:

Honey, better doesn’t mean easier. Start with now.

The skyline that held all our best stories.