My name is Harold “Hal” Morrison, and I learned what it feels like to get erased right in front of two hundred people. The organ was swelling behind the church doors when my wife hooked her fingers into my sleeve and hissed, “Hal—stop. You’re not on the list.”
I had a small U.S.
flag pin on my lapel, the cheap kind you buy at a VFW fundraiser, and in that moment it felt like the only proof I existed. The yellow envelope in my inside pocket—Emily’s card, the check I wrote the night before—went suddenly heavy, like it had turned to stone. The usher’s clipboard didn’t shake.
My hands did. Heads turned in a ripple. A whole crowd stared the way folks stare when someone tracks mud onto clean carpet.
Somewhere behind me, a kid swung a tiny paper flag on a stick, oblivious. Diane’s nails dug into my arm like she could pinch the mistake out of existence. I smiled anyway.
“It’s okay,” I said. Then I walked back down the steps, into a cold Iowa drizzle, and went home to call my lawyer. Because that morning wasn’t a mix-up.
It was a receipt. It was Saturday in late May, one of those Cedar Rapids mornings where the sky looks polished, like somebody scrubbed it clean special for a wedding. I’d been up since five.
Old habit. Even semi-retired, my body still wakes like there’s a job site waiting. In my kitchen, the coffee maker gurgled and popped, filling the house with that dark, bitter smell that feels like a handshake.
Sinatra drifted from the little radio on the counter—Diane’s choice when she wanted the world to be smooth. A glass of iced tea sat sweating by the sink from the night before. The house was quiet in that pre-event way, like even the walls were holding their breath.
I stood at the counter tugging at my tie, working the knot like it was stubborn ductwork. My hands looked strange against the crisp fabric—thick knuckles, rough skin, fingernails that never stayed perfectly clean no matter how much lava soap I used. HVAC does that.
The work gets under you. And if you’re like me, you start thinking that’s what you’re for. Diane had been floating around all week like a hummingbird—busy, stressed, somehow still making it look graceful.
“Can you believe it?” she kept saying. “Our girl is getting married.”
Our girl was Emily Carter. My stepdaughter.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
