None of it existed.

I wrapped my arms around my son’s neck, and pulled him tight against my chest.

The red silk was smooth and warm beneath my hands, Lily’s fabric, Lily’s dress, warmed now by the body of her living brother.

For seventeen years, I had carried the heavy, suffocating, private weight of a lost daughter, a grief I had mostly borne alone, because my husband would not speak of her and the world had long since expected me to be over it.

But in that moment, held tightly by the son who had refused to let his sister’s memory fade, who had carried her all these years when even her own father could not, I felt something new: a soaring, glorious, unbearable peace.