She would always be eight years old in my memories.
I would always wonder how her voice might have changed.
What books she might have loved.
Whether she would have rolled her eyes at me at sixteen.
Whether she would have wanted to borrow my clothes or considered everything I owned hopelessly embarrassing.
Those questions would always belong to me.
But Lily was not the answer to them.
She was not the teenager Maggie should have become.
She was not a second chance.
She was not a substitute daughter sent to fill an empty place.
She was Lily.
My niece.
A clever, stubborn, sarcastic sixteen-year-old who loved mystery novels, teased me about my reading habits, and had carried far too much because the adults around her had been afraid of the truth.
For months, whenever she entered my classroom, her face reminded me of everything death had taken from me.
