Seven Years After My Daughter’s Funeral, I Followed Her Husband to a Rehabilitation Center—And Saw a Woman I Thought Was Dead

She looked down at her toast.

“Yes.”

“What frightened you?”

“That she’d see me and not know me.”

I felt my chest tighten.

Ava was twelve.

The last time her mother had been part of ordinary family life, she’d been five.

Seven years was most of the childhood she could clearly remember.