Chapter 17: The Ones Who Knew, and the Ones Who Never Will
The Ones Who Knew
Not everyone saw it. In fact, most never did.
To the outside world, Stephen was just a man with too many surgeries, too many hospital stays, too many long-winded stories about a woman they had never met.
To some, Honey was just another name in his mouth — a fantasy, a fixation, a one-sided fairytale.
But they were wrong. And a few people knew it.
Sheri knew.
Not just because she witnessed it — but because she felt it.
She watched him break down after Honey’s silence. She saw the man who still called her “my wife” long after she stopped calling him anything.
She wrote to Honey once, after the crash and hospital stay:
“He’s not easy to get along with sometimes.
He’s blunt.
But he’s always right in the long run.
And he loves you more than any man I’ve ever seen love a woman.”
That wasn’t flattery. It was testimony.
Tammi knew.
His sister. His best friend. She wasn’t part of the day-to-day. But she heard the recordings. Read the letters. Watched her brother grieve without bitterness for a woman who didn’t always return his care.
She once told him:
“You’re going to die with her name in your mouth.”
And he smiled.
“Yeah. I probably will.”
Even the kids knew.
Not in detail. Not in full. But they saw enough to know:
- He never forgot a birthday.
- He cared about their school.
- He remembered their favorite foods.
- He never once made them feel like a burden.
They knew this man — this “Noning” they sometimes teased — was a fixture, not a phase.
Even when others walked away, even when the house was filled with confusion, he stayed.
But there were also the ones who never knew.
Marge never knew.
She thought he was just the past. A weakness to erase. A problem to silence. She never understood she was a footnote in a story she didn’t write.
Others never knew because they never asked. Never read the messages. Never heard the late-night tears. Never watched him cancel his own chemo to send funds for a bike or a party or a need she barely voiced.
They never knew how much of his body he gave up trying to protect a woman he still called “mine.”
Josh never needed everyone to understand. Just one person. Just Honey.
And deep down, even with all the contradictions — she knew.
Maybe not out loud. Maybe not in words.
But in her memory… it lived.
The night he walked with her under a dim streetlight.
The time he held her hand as she cried.
The song she sang into a microphone, not knowing it would echo years later in a hospital room far away.
That’s the thing about legacy:
Not everyone gets it. But the ones who do — carry it forever.