My Name Vanished From Dad’s Memorial Program, and His Old Printing Press Held the Reason Why

Chapter 2: The Second Proof

Laura stepped between me and the box.

“Those aren’t finished,” she said.

“Then there’s time to put my name in.”

“The school approved the wording yesterday.”

Dad’s memorial was being held in the high school auditorium because he had printed its concert programs for twenty years.

The band booster board was hosting it, and Laura had offered to handle the program at Dad’s shop.

She had spoken about both decisions at dinner as if they were already settled.

I had assumed a school auditorium meant there would be room for me.

Laura took the brass J from the counter and held it out.

“You can keep this.”

“It’s mine.”

“Then take it.”

She laid it in my palm with the care people use around a hot pan.

I wanted to tell her that Dad had given me more than a piece of type.

Instead I asked, “Did Sophie see the proof?”

“She has enough to carry.”

Sophie was twelve, and she had been carrying Dad’s old lunch bag around the house because it still contained his pencil.

I understood why Laura wanted to spare her.

I didn’t understand why sparing her required erasing me.

“Who at the school approved it?” I asked.

“The board chair.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“You may, after the memorial.”

Laura turned toward the back room, ending a conversation she had started.

I walked outside before I said something Sophie would hear about later.

Across the street, a man was changing the letters on the movie theater marquee.

He worked from right to left so the message would make sense from the sidewalk.

Dad had taught me to do that with the hand press.

I turned the J over and saw the shallow nick on its stem.

I had made that mark at eleven by dropping it onto the shop’s concrete floor.

Dad had called it our easiest letter to find.

At home, Mom was still at the pharmacy, so I opened my laptop at the kitchen table.

I wasn’t looking for a secret file.

I wanted the band booster chair’s name.

The school website listed the officers and a general email address, along with a notice about Friday’s memorial.

Its description said the program would celebrate Dad’s work and his family.

I wrote to the address before I could talk myself out of it.

I gave my name, said Daniel Mercer was my father, and asked who had supplied the family paragraph.

Then I deleted a sentence accusing Laura of lying.

I knew how little a stranger could do with an accusation in an email.

At school the next morning, I missed the first ten minutes of homeroom to stare at an old concert program.

I was on the school newspaper layout team, and our adviser kept a cabinet of past issues and programs beside the paper cutter.

Dad’s shop had printed most of them.

The winter concert program from two years earlier had his usual advertisement on the back.

MERCER PRINTING: IF YOU CAN READ IT, WE CAN PRINT IT.

Below the line sat a tiny orange star.

That star was in plenty of his ads, and it proved nothing about the proof Laura had shown me.

I put the program back before our adviser, Ms. Bell, came in.

“You’re here early,” she said.

“I’m borrowing the good ruler.”

“You’re holding a concert program.”

I set it on the table.

“Did you hear about Friday?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

I nodded, because accepting sympathy had begun to feel like another school assignment.

“He’s in the program, obviously,” I said.

Ms. Bell waited.

“I’m not.”

She pulled out the chair across from mine.

“Did they ask whether you wanted your name in it?”

“Laura says he never told the whole town about me.”

Ms. Bell looked at the advertisement, then at me.

“I knew he was your father.”

“You’re my teacher.”

“He told me when you joined layout.”

Dad had complained to her, in front of me, that I aligned headlines by eye instead of measuring them.

Now I wished I had listened to anything he said around that complaint.

Ms. Bell tapped the program with one finger.

“I can help you find the board chair, but I can’t decide what belongs in their program.”

“I emailed her.”

“Good.”

She left the ruler on the table.

“Also, your dad was proud of your work.”

I picked up a sheet of practice headlines so she wouldn’t see my face.

The board chair replied during lunch.

Her name was Patrice Ward, and she had approved the proof Laura submitted.

She wrote that the board had relied on the family for names and would discuss a correction if the family agreed on one.

I read the email twice.

Laura was family, and so was I.

I typed that back, then erased it.

Patrice had offered a phone call after school, so I accepted.

Mom got home before I did.

She had taken off her pharmacy badge but still had the dent it left on her sweater.

I showed her the proof from memory, reciting each line until I reached Sophie’s name.

Mom set her keys beside the sink.

“Did Laura say Dad asked her to leave you out?”

“She said he kept his life separate.”

“That’s different.”

“Maybe it’s what he wanted.”

Mom took a glass from the cabinet and filled it without drinking.

Dad and Mom had never lived together after I was born.

They worked out weekends, concerts, school forms, and the ordinary changes to those plans without making me referee.

When he died of a sudden heart problem six weeks earlier, Mom had driven me to the hospital and sat beside Laura.

I had watched them speak politely over Dad’s empty jacket.

“Your father signed your birth certificate,” Mom said.

“That isn’t a memorial program.”

“No.”

“He could have put me in one while he was alive.”

Mom put down the glass.

“June, he took you places with Sophie.”

“That’s what I told Laura.”

“I’m saying you don’t have to prove every year of your life by Thursday night.”

“I have until Friday morning.”

She reached across the table, then stopped when I leaned back.

“I’ll call Laura.”

“I already tried.”

“I know you did.”

“I don’t want you to win this for me.”

“I don’t want you standing alone in a room with eight hundred copies of a lie.”

We sat there while the refrigerator motor rattled into life.

Mom could tell me what she knew, and she could make calls.

Neither of those things made me feel less angry that Dad wasn’t there to say it himself.

Patrice called at four.

I put my phone on speaker so Mom could hear.

She sounded tired, but she knew exactly which proof I meant.

“The program is a tribute the booster board is hosting,” she said.

“We aren’t an official record keeper, and we can’t investigate family relationships from an email.”

“My father’s name is on my birth certificate,” I said.

“I believe you have a document.”

Mom slid her copy out of the folder where she kept my passport and school forms.

Patrice continued before I could read it aloud.

“I’m asking who should make decisions about naming minors in a public program.”

“I should get to make the decision about my name.”

“That matters,” she said.

“So does giving your family time to talk.”

“The boxes go to the school tomorrow.”

“I know.”

I looked at Mom, who gave me a small nod.

“Could we bring you the certificate?”

“Yes, though it won’t tell me what Daniel wanted in a memorial.”

Patrice was right about that, and I hated hearing it.

She said she had a board meeting scheduled for Thursday evening to finish service arrangements.

If Laura agreed to a correction before then, Patrice could send the shop a revised paragraph.

If we could not agree, she would bring it to the board.

“We may be able to prepare an insert after printing,” she said.

I pictured eight hundred programs stacked in neat boxes, with my name arriving late on a loose piece of paper.

“Thank you,” I said.

When we hung up, Mom called Laura.

I stood near enough to hear Mom’s side without pretending I wasn’t listening.

“She is your family, too,” Mom said.

Then she listened for a long time.

“No, I’m not asking you to put me in it.”

Another pause.

“I’ll let June decide whether she wants to speak to you.”

Mom ended the call and folded her arms.

“Laura wants to meet us at the shop.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Did she agree?”

“She wants you to hear her reasons.”

I asked for ten minutes to change out of my school clothes.

Really, I needed ten minutes to decide whether I could walk into Dad’s shop without him there.

He had kept the place warm enough for ink to behave even when he complained about the heating bill.

The front bell still made the same two tired notes.

At the shop, Laura stood beside a stack of paper sleeves.

Sophie sat on a stool in the back, drawing on scrap cardstock.

She raised her hand when she saw me.

I raised mine back.

Laura noticed.

“I asked her to stay,” she said.

“You could have asked her to go next door.”

“She wanted to be here.”

Mom stepped beside me.

“We’re here to talk about the program.”

“I know.”

Laura took the proof from beneath a clear plastic ruler.

Dad had weighted proofs that way so a curling corner wouldn’t lift into the press.

She pointed to the family paragraph.

“The school asked me for two hundred words.”

“There are fewer than two hundred,” I said.

“The rest is about his work.”

“I counted the words too.”

Laura’s mouth tightened.

“June, if I add you, people will ask Sophie why they’ve never heard about you.”

“They have heard about me.”

“Some have.”

“Then Sophie can say I’m her sister.”

“You make that sound easy.”

Sophie’s pencil stopped in the back room.

Mom glanced toward her.

Laura lowered her voice.

“Daniel and I had twelve years of marriage,” she said.

“I was there every morning, every bill, every doctor’s appointment.”

“I know,” I said.

“You weren’t there for all of it.”

“I know that too.”

Laura pressed the ruler flat.

“This program can’t explain everything.”

“It doesn’t explain Sophie either.”

“It names our household.”

Dad’s shop had never felt small to me before.

I could see the hand press under its dust cover and the wall calendar still turned to August.

The proof lay between us with enough white space for six more lines.

“You said he never acknowledged me publicly,” I said.

“I said he kept boundaries.”

“No, you said he never told the whole town.”

Laura looked toward Sophie again.

“You’re grieving,” she said.

“So am I.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then stop treating a program like a verdict on your life with him.”

I took the brass J from my pocket.

Dad had given it to me after I helped him sort a tray of type, and I had brought it because I needed something to hold.

Laura watched me turn it in my fingers.

“The old press isn’t part of this,” she said.

“Everything in this room is part of him.”

Mom put her hand lightly against my back.

“June, we can go.”

I wanted Laura to look at the blank line one more time.

She looked instead at the delivery boxes.

“The print run starts at eight tomorrow,” she said.

“If the board changes its mind, I’ll follow its instruction.”

That was more than she had offered on Wednesday.

It was also a way to make someone else tell me no.

Outside, Mom opened the car door and waited.

I saw Sophie come to the shop window.

She held up her drawing: Dad’s hand press, with its handle untied.

I gave her a thumbs-up I didn’t feel.

That night, the old programs on my bedroom floor covered the rug.

I had brought home three from Ms. Bell’s cabinet with her permission.

The orange stars appeared in different places each year, always near the shop ad.

Dad had drawn the first one when I was eleven.

He told me a designer’s eyes needed somewhere to rest after a block of black type.

I had argued that a star had too many points for resting.

He used it anyway.

On Thursday morning, I checked the shop’s public website for examples of past work.

Its gallery held wedding invitations, county fair flyers, church bulletins, and a photograph of a program from last year’s middle school musical.

I recognized Sophie’s handwriting in the sign painted on the set.

Dad had printed that program for free.

I went through the gallery because I wanted to know whether he had photographed the actual pages.

The thumbnails were too small, so I opened them one at a time.

On the final image, an orange star sat above a list of sponsors.

I enlarged it.

Under MERCER PRINTING, the line read, “For my daughters, June and Sophie, who never leave a proof alone.”

I made the image fill the screen.

It was a photograph of a folded program, not an editable web banner.

At the bottom edge, Sophie’s name appeared in the cast list.

At the top, a piece of masking tape held the open program against Dad’s cutting mat.

He had photographed it in the shop.

I remembered that musical.

Sophie had played a tree who got to deliver one line, and Dad had bought tickets for Mom and me.

I had sat two rows behind Laura because Sophie kept looking back to make sure both of us were there.

The program had been in my hands that night.

I had spent the interval circling crooked line breaks in the cast biographies for Dad to see.

I had never turned it over.

Ms. Bell let me use the cabinet again during lunch.

I found the musical program between a spring concert and a stack of play tickets.

The ad was there on paper, the same words beneath the orange star.

I pressed my thumb over the name June.

The paper had a faint dent along the fold where somebody had run a thumbnail to make it lie flat.

It had survived because Ms. Bell kept school performances for the newspaper archive, and Dad’s website showed it because he was proud of the finished printing.

Neither copy told me who had written the line.

I needed to know before I carried it into the board meeting.

I asked Ms. Bell whether I could call the theater director from her room.

She found the number, then stayed at her desk while I spoke.

The director, Mr. Han, remembered the ad because Dad had insisted on paying for it even though he donated the printing.

“He said the cast deserved actual sponsors,” Mr. Han told me.

“Did he give you the words?”

“He handed me a folded sheet at rehearsal.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I doubt it,” he said.

“We recycle paperwork after the show closes.”

That sounded like a dead end.

Then he added, “I sent him a proof and asked him to approve every ad.”

“Could you still have that email?”

“Possibly, but I won’t send a student someone else’s messages without checking.”

“I understand.”

He offered to look and speak to Patrice directly if he found it.

I gave him her number.

I thanked him, hung up, and found Ms. Bell watching me with a raised eyebrow.

“You asked a question he could answer,” she said.

“I asked three.”

“You listened to the first two answers.”

I put the musical program in a folder.

My hands were shaking enough that I creased a corner.

I smoothed it with the ruler Dad had never convinced me to use.

The next problem was Sophie.

She had helped put on the musical, and she might have seen the ad.

If she had, she might also have known what Laura meant by “boundaries.”

I texted her that I found an old program and wanted to ask her about it.

She replied with a picture of her tree costume.

Under it she wrote, Dad said I looked like a nervous broccoli.

I laughed in the middle of the newspaper room.

Then I asked whether we could meet after school by the gym doors.

She came carrying Dad’s lunch bag.

“I told Mom I was getting my music folder,” she said.

“You really should get it.”

“It’s in here.”

She unzipped the bag and showed me a wrinkled folder beside Dad’s pencil.

I showed her the sponsor ad.

Sophie read it, looked at me, and read it again.

“He called us both daughters,” she said.

“Did you know it was in there?”

“I knew he bought an ad.”

“Did you see this line?”

“I was a tree, June.”

“That doesn’t answer me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She rubbed the strap of the lunch bag with her thumb.

“Mom said people might make a big thing out of us being sisters.”

“People already know.”

“Some people.”

I heard Laura’s words in her voice, though Sophie hadn’t meant them as a weapon.

Sophie looked at my folder.

“Are you showing that at the meeting?”

“If they let me.”

“Can I come?”

“I don’t want you fighting with your mom for me.”

“Then don’t make me fight.”

She held out her hand for the program.

I gave it to her, and she read the line a third time.

“I liked when he put us together,” she said.

“He usually did at the shop.”

“At home too, when you were there.”

I had not known that counted to her.

She folded the program carefully and returned it.

“I’ll ask Mom for a ride to the meeting,” she said.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

Sophie walked away before I could say something protective that sounded too much like Laura.

After school, Mom met me at the library parking lot.

She had taken an early shift so she could attend the meeting.

I showed her the program and the photograph on Dad’s website.

She read the ad without speaking.

“Did you ever know about this?” I asked.

“No.”

“That feels impossible.”

“He didn’t send me every school program.”

“He didn’t send me this one either.”

Mom touched the orange star.

“He did buy us tickets.”

“He could have pointed it out.”

“Maybe he thought you’d read the back.”

“Then he didn’t know me.”

“He knew you’d be fixing the cast list.”

I smiled despite myself.

Mom set the program down.

“Ask Mr. Han about the approval, and tell Patrice what you found.”

“I did.”

“Good.”

“Laura could say Dad meant something else.”

“Then let her say what she means.”

I had spent two days trying to guess what Dad would say for himself.

Mom put the program back in my folder.

“You can ask for your own name without guessing his mind,” she said.

At five, Laura sent Mom a message.

Sophie had told her about the meeting, and Laura wanted to know whether we planned to bring her into an adult disagreement.

Mom showed it to me.

I called Laura myself.

“She asked to come,” I said when Laura answered.

“She doesn’t know what the board meeting is for.”

“Tell her.”

“She knows her father died and everyone is pulling at him.”

The sentence hurt because Sophie had been carrying a lunch bag for six weeks.

“I didn’t ask her to choose.”

“You showed her an old advertisement.”

“She wanted to see it.”

“An advertisement doesn’t give you the right to upset her.”

“I didn’t make him buy it.”

Laura went quiet.

When she spoke, her voice sounded smaller.

“You found the musical program.”

“Yes.”

“Daniel and I disagreed about that line.”

I sat down on my bed.

“He wrote it?”

“He approved it.”

“Why did you tell me he never told the town?”

“I said he kept things separate.”

“You said that at the shop.”

Laura breathed into the phone.

“He wanted to believe one line in a program fixed how awkward things were.”

“What things?”

“Some parents at school knew Sophie had a sister, and some didn’t.”

“That was awkward for you.”

“It was awkward for her.”

“Ask Sophie.”

“I have.”

We both knew Sophie had asked to attend the meeting.

Laura said the board had invited her to explain the wording she supplied.

She would bring Sophie only if Sophie still wanted to go after dinner.

“I don’t need her to speak,” I said.

“Then leave her out of your argument.”

Laura ended the call.

I wrote down exactly what she had said while I could still remember it.

Her claim had changed from Dad never telling the town to Dad believing an ad could fix an awkward situation.

I didn’t know whether that was grief or a plan.

I knew it was different.

At six, Mr. Han called me back.

He had found his email exchange with Dad from the musical, but he wanted to tell me what it showed before sharing anything.

He had sent a PDF proof to Dad’s shop address.

Dad replied from that account, asking Mr. Han to move the orange star away from the fold and keep the daughters line as written.

“That tells me he reviewed it,” Mr. Han said.

“It doesn’t tell me what he would have wanted for a memorial.”

“I know.”

“I’ve offered to show Patrice the exchange.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry you had to spend today looking for it.”

I looked at the concert programs scattered across my rug.

“I’m good at finding bad spacing,” I said.

“This was almost the same.”

The board met in a small room behind the school auditorium.

A folding table held cups of coffee, two boxes of tissues, and a stack of the finished memorial programs.

The print run had started on time.

I counted the boxes along the wall and stopped when I reached seven.

Patrice greeted us at the door.

She was wearing the same booster badge I had seen her wear while handing out programs at concerts.

“June, your mother, thank you for coming,” she said.

“I’ve given the board your email and told them you’d like to speak.”

Laura sat near the far end of the table.

Sophie was beside her with Dad’s lunch bag on her knees.

Laura met my eyes, then looked down at a printed agenda.

There were four other board members, all adults who had known Dad through school events.

Mr. Han sat against the wall as a guest.

He gave me a quick nod.

Patrice began with the service schedule and a request for volunteers to move chairs.

For five minutes I listened to people discuss a microphone stand.

I hated the microphone stand for being a problem they could solve.

Then Patrice reached the program.

“Laura submitted the family text, and our committee approved the layout,” she said.

“We have a request to correct it.”

Laura lifted a hand.

“I want everyone to know the text was within the word limit you gave me.”

“That isn’t in dispute,” Patrice said.

“It matters because I had to choose.”

Patrice turned to me.

“June, tell us what you’re asking for.”

I had practiced a speech in Mom’s car.

It vanished when I looked at the stack of programs.

“I’m Daniel Mercer’s daughter,” I said.

“I’m asking you to name me as his daughter in the program you hand out Friday.”

One board member, a man who had helped Dad load paper into the school office, looked from me to Laura.

“Were we told there were two daughters?”

“No,” Patrice said.

Laura drew the agenda toward herself.

“I supplied the household paragraph I believed Daniel would want.”

“You can explain that,” Patrice said.

“But June should finish.”

I opened my folder.

“My mother has my birth certificate if you need it.”

Mom held it out, but Patrice didn’t reach for it yet.

“I’ve spent Saturdays at his shop since I could reach the counter,” I said.

“Sophie and I went to concerts together.”

“I’m not asking you to put my mother in the program or change the years Laura was married to him.”

“I’m asking you to correct one line.”

Laura folded her hands.

“That sounds simple,” she said.

“It isn’t simple for a child who has to answer questions she didn’t choose.”

“Sophie can decide what she wants to answer,” I said.

“She is twelve.”

“I’m fifteen.”

Laura’s fingers tightened around her pen.

Patrice asked her to explain the text.

Laura said she had written about the home Dad returned to each night.

She said the memorial program was short, the school audience knew Sophie, and naming me without an explanation might invite questions at a service meant to honor Dad.

She spoke evenly, and I could see why the board had accepted her paragraph.

One member asked whether the program was intended as a complete family record.

“No,” Laura said.

“That’s exactly my point.”

Patrice turned to me.

“How would you answer the concern about privacy?”

“I want my name there,” I said.

“Sophie can keep hers there.”

Sophie raised her head.

“I want that too,” she said.

Laura looked at her.

“You don’t have to speak.”

“I wanted to come.”

Patrice gave Sophie time to say more, but she only held the lunch bag against her knees.

Laura set down her pen.

“June, I know you loved him,” she said.

“I have never denied that.”

“You denied that he told people I was his daughter.”

“I said he kept the families separate.”

I took out the musical program.

“Last year he paid for an ad in this.”

I laid it on the table, facing Patrice.

“The school kept a copy, and his shop put a photograph of it online.”

Patrice read the line under the orange star.

The board member nearest her leaned over.

Laura did not look at the page.

“That was one advertisement,” she said.

“He and I discussed it afterward.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“That he hadn’t meant to make things harder for Sophie.”

Sophie turned toward her.

“Dad said that?”

Laura looked at Patrice.

“I’m describing a private conversation with my husband.”

Patrice put a hand on the program.

“We can’t verify that conversation.”

“I know.”

“Then we have to consider what we can verify.”

Laura nodded, as though she expected that to help her.

“An ad can be written by a shop employee,” she said.

“Daniel didn’t personally set every line his shop printed.”

She was right.

I had fixed enough of his layouts to know the ad alone could not prove he chose those words.

I looked toward Mr. Han.

Patrice followed my glance.

“Mr. Han, you said you had information about the ad.”

He came to the table with a printout.

“I directed the musical,” he said.

“Our files still contain the sponsor proof because we used email for approvals.”

He showed Patrice the message from the shop address and the PDF attached to it.

The reply asked him to move the star and keep the daughters line.

“I spoke with Daniel about that ad at rehearsal,” Mr. Han said.

“He handed me the copy, paid for the space, and later approved the proof.”

Laura stared at the paper.

“You can’t know what he thought a year later.”

“No,” Mr. Han said.

“I can tell them what happened that week.”

Patrice read the email, then passed it to the next board member.

I watched the paper travel farther than my voice had.

Dad’s little star had moved because he noticed it was too close to the fold.

He had checked the line about us at the same time.

Laura picked up her pen again and clicked it once.

“Daniel made a choice then,” she said.

“I made this one after he died.”

Nobody interrupted her.

“I was the person asked for the memorial text, and I used the family paragraph I thought fit a school service.”

“That is true,” Patrice said.

“You were asked.”

“If you change it now, you tell Sophie her mother lied.”

Sophie’s eyes went to the lunch bag.

“I heard what you told June,” she said.

Laura’s face changed.

For a moment I thought she might tell Sophie to be quiet.

Instead she uncapped her pen, then put the cap back on.

“I was trying to protect you,” she said.

“I know,” Sophie answered.

“I still want June in it.”

Patrice waited until Sophie had settled back in her chair.

Then she asked Mom to show my birth certificate.

Mom placed the certified copy on the table, and Patrice checked Dad’s name before handing it back.

She did it without announcing my birthday or reading any other detail aloud.

“This establishes the relationship for our purpose,” Patrice said.

“The ad and Mr. Han’s account establish that Daniel publicly named both girls as his daughters.”

Laura shifted in her seat.

“It establishes what he did once,” she said.

“We don’t have to decide what he would say tonight,” Patrice answered.

“We have to decide what our own program says tomorrow.”

One board member asked whether they could recall the printed copies.

Laura shook her head.

“The press run is done, and some boxes are already at the school.”

“Could we print replacement pages?”

“Not by morning,” she said.

“The program is folded and stapled.”

Another member suggested a slip inside each copy.

I pictured my name falling onto the auditorium floor.

Patrice asked me what I wanted it to say.

I looked at Sophie, who was worrying the lunch bag zipper.

“The family paragraph should name us both,” I said.

“If it has to be an insert, put it in every copy.”

Patrice asked whether Sophie and Laura agreed with that wording.

Sophie nodded.

Laura looked at the seven boxes.

“A correction is your decision,” she told Patrice.

It was the first time she had described it that way.

Patrice proposed a motion to print an insert naming Dad’s wife and both daughters and place one inside every program before doors opened.

The board voted in favor after a member asked who would cover the extra printing.

Laura said the shop would do it.

I offered to help fold the slips.

Patrice assigned two board volunteers to check the boxes in the morning, one copy at a time.

Nobody announced that a family had been repaired.

They still had to settle the service order and find someone to move the microphone stand.

After the meeting, Laura came toward me with the old musical program in her hand.

“You left this,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I should have named you when Patrice asked for the paragraph.”

I waited.

“I was afraid Sophie would spend the whole service explaining our family instead of remembering her dad.”

“She might still get questions.”

“Yes.”

“Sophie and I can answer together if we want to.”

Laura handed me the program.

“I heard her.”

I didn’t tell Laura it was all right.

She hadn’t asked me to, and it wasn’t.

Mom drove me to the shop so Laura could print the insert before closing.

Sophie rode with her mother.

At the front counter, Laura found the corrected wording in Patrice’s email and set it in the shop computer.

I stood behind her, far enough away to let her work.

The line read: He is survived by his wife, Laura, and his daughters, June and Sophie.

There was nothing complicated in its spacing.

Laura sent it to the printer, and the first page slid out warm.

I checked that both our names were spelled correctly.

Dad had taught me to check names twice, even when everything else looked perfect.

Sophie pulled the dust cover from the hand press while we waited for the rest.

“Can it still work?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Laura glanced at us.

“Your father kept the type in the drawer beneath it.”

I found the tray, put my brass J into its empty space, and pressed it gently into line with the other letters.

On Friday morning, Sophie and I stood at opposite ends of the auditorium lobby with two board volunteers.

We slipped the correction into each program while chairs scraped across the floor inside.

When Sophie reached the last box, she brought me a program and opened it to the insert.

“Both names,” she said.

“Twice checked.”

At the service, I sat beside her.

People asked us about Dad’s terrible jokes, his free concert posters, and the way he always made everyone read a proof.

One woman asked how we were related.

Sophie answered before I could.

“We’re sisters.”

Two weeks later, Patrice sent us the corrected digital program for the school archive.

Laura changed the shop website’s memorial notice to match it, and she showed Sophie and me before she posted it.

I began going to the shop on Saturdays again, sometimes with Sophie and sometimes alone.

Laura and I still disagreed about where Dad kept the best paper.

One Saturday, Sophie asked me to help print thank-you cards for the people who had brought food.

I set the first line while she chose a small orange star for the bottom corner.

Then I found my nicked brass J, turned it backward, and put my name where anyone reading the card could see it.