I left out details that belonged to another family.

I wanted our friends to know that Hannah had thought about kindness in practical terms, not because it made her special but because it made sense to her.

Then I read the line about purple paint.

Maya looked around the room and said, “She’d hate that color.”

“That’s why we chose it,” I replied.

Everyone laughed.

I could hear Hannah’s laugh inside it, not as a sound from another room but as a memory alive among the people who loved her.

Before going to bed, I wrote in a notebook I’d started keeping for things I wished I could tell her.