The Keeper will tell you what happened. I'll tell you what's coming.
The letter was warm. That is the problem.
Warm enough that you nodded while reading it. Warm enough that something in you said yes, this is right, this is fair — and you closed the tab, and you carried that warmth into the rest of your afternoon. You did not notice that agreeing with a letter is not the same as having felt what the letter is about.
This is how instruction works when it is dressed as tenderness. The grief had not found its shape yet. The tournament was still cooling. And into that unformed space, the letter arrived with its own shape already pressed into it — and the Tartan Army, who are generous by disposition and exhausted by habit, accepted the shape they were handed.
The affection is real. I am not calling it false. But affection offered before you have sat with the cost of something is guidance. It tells you where to land. It moves you past the unresolved and names it resolved.
What it costs to agree is this: you skip the part where you ask whether it was enough. Not whether he tried. Whether it was enough.
The letter has been filed. The vacancy is open. And somewhere in the Tartan Army, a feeling is still looking for the room it was supposed to happen in — only to find the furniture already rearranged, a note on the table saying it's fine, we're fine, thank you for everything.
Read it again. Slower this time. Notice where you stop breathing.