There was something in the act of it, the two of us measuring and sanding and fitting the wood, choosing together which of Rebecca’s things would go inside, that did more healing than any conversation could have.

It made a statement, in something more solid than words, about what our family had decided.

Brenda had tried to make Rebecca into a secret, a source of shame, a thing to be tucked away in the back of drawers.

We were building her, instead, a place of honor in the most visible hallway of our home, with our own hands, on purpose.

Every time Hannah walked past that cabinet, she would see the opposite of everything Brenda had taught her: that her mother was not a secret but a treasure, not a source of the family’s discomfort but a permanent, cherished part of its story.