Chapter 18 - The main truth By then we had enough pieces.
Cordelia did love Bram.
She did not want him injured.
She did not believe disabled children should be excluded from all family life.
The truth was more specific.
And more dangerous because of it.
Cordelia believed formal family representation should minimize visible disability.
Not daily life.
Not private dinners.
Not casual snapshots.
The photographs she considered “legacy” images.
Weddings.
Anniversaries.
Formal portraits.
She had done it with Graham.
Then with Bram.
Her logic:
People should remember the person, not the equipment.
Her method:
Remove the equipment.
Or remove the person when the equipment could not be removed.
That distinction had somehow disappeared in her mind.
She moved Bram behind the tent because she intended the primary Hartwell wedding portrait to be arranged without his wheelchair.
Afterward, she planned a smaller picture with me, Alaric, and Bram.
She believed that counted as inclusion.
She told Bram he would return after photographs.
When he resisted leaving the table, she tried to move him physically.
And when I saw her, she was no longer managing an image.
May you like
She was pushing a six-year-old who had locked his wheels and said no.
That was the line even her own explanation could not soften.
