Five Years of Marriage to Mr. Bradford novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Every Year
The first Daniel Boylan Music Bursary was awarded on the last Friday in June, in the hall at Salthill.
I stood on the stage where Imogen had once stood, beside the same easel and the same photograph.
The hall was full again, and this time nobody was holding a candle.
They were holding fiddles.
"The bursary pays for one summer in Galway," I said into the microphone. "Lessons, a room above a kitchen, and the price of a flight. It was started seven years ago, in secret, at a high school in Worcester, by a man who did not dare put his name on it."
I did not look at the back of the hall.
I did not have to.
"It was my brother's dream, and it was his gift to give," I said. "I'd like to say the name of the person who gave it. Leonard Bradford."
The applause was uneven and warm, and a few people turned in their seats.
Leonard stood against the back wall with his hands in his pockets and his ears red.
The winner was a girl of nineteen from my old high school with a cheap fiddle case on her back.
She came up the steps shaking.
I put a new case in her arms, one with Danny's initials burned into the lid.
"Ceol," I said. "That means music."
"I know," said the girl, in terrible Irish, and the whole hall laughed, and so did I.
Afterward, Fiona caught my sleeve beside the brack.
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