“When?”
“Next week.”
“And you wanted me to find out from a letter?”
“I wanted Lily to have three days when nobody talked about illness.”
I couldn’t be completely angry with him.
But neither could I tell him that he’d done the right thing.
“When we come home, we don’t hide anything from each other anymore.”
“I promise.”
The next day, the manager had prepared another surprise for us.
Nothing luxurious.
Something perfect for Lily.
On the beach there was a blanket, a few lanterns, and a bucket filled with seashells.
An employee from a nearby marine center had come to talk to her about dolphins, turtles, and sea creatures.
Lily bombarded him with questions.
“Do mermaids exist?”
The man smiled.
“We haven’t found one yet.”
“So maybe they exist.”
“Exactly.”
Lily turned toward me triumphantly.
“See, Mommy?”
I laughed.
That afternoon, we probably took two hundred pictures.
Not because I wanted to document the end of my child’s life.
But because, for the first time in months, I stopped thinking about the end.
I lived the day that was in front of us.
After we returned home, Dad had his surgery.
It went well.
Two weeks later, he was sitting beside Lily’s bed again, reading her stories.
Only now, Lily kept interrupting him.
“Grandpa, you forgot something.”
“What?”
“The doctor said you have to rest too.”
Robert looked at me.
“Now I have two bosses.”
The following months weren’t easy.
Lily’s illness didn’t disappear because she had seen the sea.
There were hospital stays.
Good days.
Very difficult days.
Treatments.
Tests.
Moments when hope seemed enormous, and others when I barely dared to say the word “tomorrow.”
But something inside me had changed.
Before the trip, I had tried to save every future day.
After the trip, I began to understand that I had to live the days we still had.
We made an “adventure jar.”
Lily wrote little notes.
“Eat pancakes for dinner.”
“Sleep together in the living room.”
“Put makeup on Grandpa.”
Dad protested at the last one.
He lost the vote, two to one.
I still have the picture of him wearing pink nail polish.
Lily outlived the doctors’ initial estimate.
Not by years.
But by precious months.
During her final period, the shell necklace was almost always beside her.
One evening, she placed it in my palm.
“Mommy, keep it.”
“It’s yours.”
