That had never been the goal, and it was worth guarding against, because a house frozen around a dead woman would have been its own kind of harm to a living child.

The point was something more delicate and more true: that Rebecca was not a wound to be hidden or a rival to be managed, but simply a part of our family’s history, to be carried forward openly, with love, and also with the freedom to keep living.

Pamela had wanted to erase Rebecca entirely, to make her a shameful secret.

The counselor gently warned against the temptation to overcorrect, to enshrine her so completely that Hannah could never grow past the grief.