And on the other side of the locket, tucked behind a small pane of glass, was a lock of soft, dark hair.

My daughter’s hair.

My daughter, Lily.

Julian’s twin sister.

And in that moment, holding a lock of my dead daughter’s hair in a gymnasium seventeen years after I had buried her, looking up at my living son in a full-sized replica of the red dress she had loved, I understood, all at once, everything my brave boy had done, and why, and I broke down entirely, the sobs tearing out of me before I could stop them, because the meaning of it was almost more beautiful and more painful than I could bear.

I had thought that locket was lost.