I looked down.
Then Hannah read another line.
“I hope someday you’ll understand that we were only afraid of what knowing might do to you.”
David’s eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t remember writing that.”
“Well, you did.”
She sat across from us.
Then she said something I had spent eighteen years being terrified I would never hear.
“I don’t feel guilty that I lived.”
I looked at her.
She was crying now.
“I feel sad that Rosie died.”
“So do we.”
“I feel strange knowing I had a twin and never knew.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I feel like I’m supposed to miss someone I never met.”
I reached across the table.
She let me take her hand.
Then she said,
“But I don’t feel guilty.”
My throat tightened.
“I’m angry that you decided I would.”
I nodded.
“We made assumptions.”
“You don’t get to decide what I can handle just because you’re afraid of how I’ll react.”
“You’re right.”
“I should have known her name.”
That sentence broke me.
“Yes.”
“I should have had photographs.”
“Yes.”
“I should have understood why Grandma sometimes cried on my birthday.”
I covered my mouth.
Hannah looked at both of us.
“I’m not saying you wanted to hurt me.”
“We didn’t,” David said.
“I know.”
She wiped her eyes.
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
That was the first honest conversation the three of us had ever had about Rosie.
It wasn’t the last.
A week later, Hannah asked where her sister was buried.
She had never been to Rosie’s grave.
Of course she hadn’t.
We had somehow managed to hide an entire grave from our daughter.
Even now, that sentence makes me ashamed.
We went on a Saturday morning.
Just Hannah, David, and me.
David brought flowers.
I brought nothing.
Hannah carried the letter David had written on her first birthday.
Rosie’s headstone was small.
ROSIE W.
BELOVED DAUGHTER.
Nine days separated the birth and death dates.
Hannah stood silently for a while.
Then she touched the stone.
“Hi.”
David started crying.
So did I.
Hannah unfolded the letter.
She read part of it silently.
Then she placed a copy beneath the flowers.
There was something written on the back in her handwriting.
I didn’t read it.
I didn’t ask.
That belonged to her.
On the drive home, the wooden chest sat beside Hannah in the back seat.
