“I can’t. I’m not ready. I’ll write it down later.”

“Sometimes we have to do things because we must, even when we don’t believe we’re ready,” he said.

Colleen took the microphone from Shane and stared out over the crowd, her throat constricting and her eyes burning with both fear and fatigue. This was a terrible idea. Then her gaze stopped scanning, snagged and stayed on Beckett’s gaze. Yes, she’d been looking for him, moving toward him instead of away, and spoke to him.

“Our dad, Gavin Aengus Donohue, was a bright light in this world. There is no speech I can give and no story I can tell that will allow you to know who he fully was, that can convey his infinite qualities. For weeks now, my sister, brother and I have been gathering stories about Dad, wanting to surprise him at this party, at his birthday party. And what I have come to see is that he was loved by everyone he knew. He was the same man and yet somehow a little bit different with each of you. The stories we collected have shown us that his integrity and his grace and his charm were widely shared and real, and yet there were parts of himself that only we, his family, knew, and more still that were secret only unto himself. You each carry your own Gavin Donohue with you.

“I’d like to share a few stories about what made Dad special to me.” She had no time to thoughtfully choose what she shared, but the stories flowed out of her: of how Gavin took his kids to work and taught them the pub trade; of how he showed them how to fish and what spending Sundays together on the water meant to his wife, his children and grandchildren; of his bad jokes and his ill timing and of his abiding love for his family and the river that ultimately carried him away. And then she told them of her great love for him.

“I am sure that for all our life, my brother and sister and I will miss him as achingly as we do now. But his life runs through us just as the river does this town.”

Colleen put down the microphone, set it on the stool. There came the hushed sound of muffled sobs and murmur of voices. Shane dropped his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close as he lifted the microphone. “If anyone else . . .”

But already a line had formed, those wanting to tell their version of Gavin, wanting to share who he was in the particulars of their life. Same man, infinite facets.