And the first thing I saw, before I saw anything else, before I even fully registered her face, was the jewelry.

My mother’s vintage pearl earrings, the ones my father had given her decades ago, glinting at my sister’s ears.

And on my sister’s wrist, the gold bracelet my father had given my mother on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the one she had worn every day of my childhood, the one that was supposed to be, someday, mine.

Valerie was wearing them both, casually, as though they were her own.

I want to be precise about what those two pieces of jewelry meant, because a stranger might see only a pair of earrings and a bracelet, small things, replaceable things.