Once Upon a Wardrobe(65)

I stood at the lectern and took a breath; everyone waited.

I meant to read what I’d written the night before in one long exhale of words. I opened my mouth and let the words flow with the beauty of all George was and is.

When I finished, I was undone by it all. I had nothing left. I walked back to the pew in a haze. I sat between Mum and Dad and their arms were around me lickety-split, pulling me as close as they could. We stayed that way for what remained of a service I don’t remember, the sounds and prayers sliding off of me.

An hour later, as we stood in the warm narthex crowded with people, Padraig walked toward me with his long strides and his green eyes and his kind, sad smile.

“Megs,” he said. I loved hearing my name on his lips in the midst of despair. “It was beautiful. You are beautiful.”

“Some of those words are yours,” I said. “The words you gave me Christmas Day.”

“They are ours.” He moved closer just as my uncle Brian approached and swooped me into his arms and held me so tight I had to give him a light punch on the arm. “I will miss him every day, Megs. Every. Single. Day.”

“Me too,” I said. “Every minute.”

“He was something special, that lad. Not meant for a place like this.” Uncle Brian kissed my forehead. “And what you read, that was beautiful. Who wrote it?”

I lifted my eyebrows and sensed the swollenness of my eyelids. “Padraig and I did.”

“Huh.” Uncle Brian stepped back. “Well, look at you. A writer to boot.” He kissed me again, then he was off to another cousin.

Padraig had taken a step or two back. I reached for him. He came closer and knit his fingers through mine and held tight. It was the best I could do at that moment, the only way I knew to say, “I love you.”

But he knew. I could see that he knew.

Mr. Lewis and Warnie approached. It was an odd feeling to see them together outside their home or acreage or college, as if a storybook had come to life. I didn’t think about it as I let go of Padraig’s hand and threw my arms around them, both of them, one arm each, and embraced them.

They hugged me in return, and I marveled at this. In a matter of weeks I had come to know these two men better than some of my own family. They had changed my life, my heart, without telling me what to do or think or believe, and I didn’t understand how.

And they had eased George into a new world.

“Thank you for everything. Both of you. Thank you. You gave my brother beautiful last days.”

“No, Megs,” Mr. Lewis said. “You gave your brother beautiful last days. Your heart shines as bright and clear as the stars.”

Padraig piped up. “He’s right, indeed. Your heart does do that.”

The doors of the church opened as people began to make their way outside, and our group of four did the same until we stood on the grass that was turning to slush under everyone’s shoes.

Warnie coughed past his sorrow-drenched voice. “We wanted to meet him. I am so sorry that didn’t happen.”

“He met you in your stories,” I said. I looked away from these men I had come to love. I looked to the sky, to the stars hidden in sunlight that would reveal themselves in the night. I looked to wherever my brother might be. “And you’ve allowed me to see that we are enchanted not by being able to explain it all, but by its very mystery. That is—finally, that is—enough.”

Padraig squeezed my hand so tightly and Mr. Lewis said, “I hear you. I hear you.”

Now, yanked from the memory, another hand pulls at me—my grandson’s. And I am back in my library with my husband and young George.

Padraig sees my faraway look and he asks me, “Love, are you okay?”

I tilt my face up for another kiss as George squirms in my lap. “I am more than okay.” I glance down at the last pages of the book and I read the ending, the words I’d read at a service all those years ago when we said good-bye to my brother.

The brave boy’s story was short but full of just as much courage as any knight in shining armor fighting a dragon, just as full of bravery as any explorer journeying to the ends of the world to save a maiden, just as adventurous as any odyssey to the center of the earth.

The young boy understood now, after all the tales and adventures, after all the drawings and stories, and he told the grown-ups, who aren’t as smart as children, “There is a light, a bright lamppost light where all stories begin and end.”

Then his bedroom filled with the feeling of snow and light and warmth and darkness and joy and grief—everything of the broken and whole world, incongruent and holy, overflowing with mystery.

This feeling in his room was far better than the stories he loved, and yet the same. The hints had always been right in front of his eyes and inside his heart. The stories that thrilled him were echoes of the world that waited for him.

And he heard, as loud as a new world thundering out of the cosmos, the mighty roar of a lion.





A Note from Douglas Gresham




Patti Callahan Henry is already becoming known for her works, which indeed are well-admired books—full of good stories and a steadily deepening understanding of people.

But for me, all her previous books were overcome by the first book she wrote about my mother, Joy Davidman, and her marriage to C. S. Lewis, my stepfather. And this is not simply because she is a good writer (which she definitely is) but also because of the delicacy and care with which she wrote Becoming Mrs. Lewis.