“I am so, so sorry, my darlings.

I wrote you a letter every single year.

I bought you presents every year that someone never let me give you.

I need you to hear me — you were wanted.

Every day of your whole lives, you were wanted.

Always.”

For a moment Piper just looked at this weeping stranger who had her father’s eyes.

Then she reached into the pocket of her little coat, and she pulled out the faded pink shovel — she had brought it, she had carried it all the way here without my knowing, the way she had carried it to bed for eleven years — and she held it up.