The cereal bowl nearly slipped from my hands when Principal Brennan called.
“Six men came to the school asking for Letty.”
My husband, Jonathan, had died only three months earlier, so panic immediately took over.
When I arrived, I found my daughter sitting beside her classmate Millie, who was wearing the wig Letty’s donated hair had helped create.
But something else caught my attention.
On the principal’s desk sat Jonathan’s old yellow construction helmet—the one Letty had decorated with a tiny purple star when she was six.
Standing beside it were several of Jonathan’s former coworkers.
His supervisor, Marcus, explained why they had come.
While Jonathan was battling cancer, he had secretly started a fund called the “Keep Going Fund” to help families struggling with medical expenses.
His coworkers had continued it after his death.
Marcus placed a check in front of Millie’s mother.
She hesitated, ashamed to accept it.
I gently told her, “This is exactly what Jonathan would have wanted.”
Then Marcus handed me an envelope.
It contained a letter from my husband.
Jonathan had written that he knew I would try to handle everything alone—but he wanted me to let people help us after he was gone.
His coworkers had promised him they would look after us.
Before leaving, I also learned that Millie had been eating lunch alone in the nurse’s bathroom to avoid the students who bullied her.
The school had already begun investigating.
That evening, I invited Millie and her mother to dinner.
On the drive home, Letty held her father’s yellow helmet in her lap.
“Do you think Dad would have cried if he saw what I did?” she asked.
I smiled.
“Oh, absolutely. And then he would have blamed the dust.”
She laughed and touched the little purple star.