Chapter 10
Ethan’s fifth birthday party was the biggest one the shop had ever seen.
We closed the store for the day, strung dinosaur balloons all over the front, set up a bounce house in the backyard, hired a guy to come do face painting and balloon animals.
All of Ethan’s kindergarten friends came, all of Sarah’s hospital coworkers, all of our friends and family, 50 people crowded into the shop and the yard, laughing, eating cake, watching Ethan run around in a T-Rex costume, yelling “I’m the king of the dinosaurs!”
I was standing by the cake table, watching Sarah help Ethan blow out the five candles on his dinosaur-shaped cake, when Mia came over, holding her phone, grinning.
“Look at this,” she said.
She showed me the Lila Rose Project Facebook page.
We’d just hit our 1,000th locket donation.
There was a photo of a little girl in the hospital, holding the locket we’d made her, with a photo of her late mom inside, smiling through her tears.
The caption said: Thank you for giving me a piece of my mom to keep with me always.
My throat tightened.
Lila would’ve loved that.
After the party, after all the guests left, after Ethan was asleep on the couch, covered in cake and glitter, holding his new T-Rex stuffed animal, Sarah and I sat in the now-quiet shop, cleaning up the last of the plates and balloons.
She stopped by the counter, looking at the framed photos—our beach trip, the museum, the old polaroid, the 1,000th locket donation.
She touched the locket around her neck, the one she’d worn every day since that first rainy night in the shop.
“Can you believe it’s been two years?” she said.
She looked at me, smiling.
“Two years since I walked in here, scared out of my mind, thinking I was gonna lose everything.”
I walked over, put my arm around her, pulled her close.
“Feels like yesterday,” I said.
“And it feels like we’ve been together forever. Both at the same time.”
She nodded, quiet for a second.
Then she turned to me, her eyes soft.
“I have something for you,” she said.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small velvet box, handed it to me.
I opened it, confused.
Inside was a new silver locket, smaller than the original, the front carved with three roses—one big, one medium, one small.
I flipped it open.
Left side: the photo of Lila and me from the original locket.
Right side: the beach photo of Sarah, Ethan, and me.
Engraved on the back, in Sarah’s neat handwriting: The love that finds its way home.
“Sarah,” I said.
My voice was thick.
“Baby, this is beautiful.”
“I had it made for you,” she said.
She was twisting her hands, a little nervous.
“For your birthday next week. But I wanted to give it to you today. Because today isn’t just Ethan’s birthday. It’s the day our family really started. The day we all got to be together, safe and happy, just like Mom always wanted.”
I put the new locket on, right next to the old one she’d given me for Christmas.
They clinked softly together, warm against my chest.
I hugged her tight, kissed the top of her head.
“Best gift ever,” I said.
We went out to the backyard then, carrying the sleeping Ethan between us, laying him down in the hammock we’d hung between the two big oak trees, covering him with a soft blanket.
We sat on the porch steps next to him, watching the stars come out, the same stars Lila used to point out to Sarah, the same stars Lila and I had watched from our fire escape 25 years before.
Somewhere, a cricket chirped.
A breeze blew through the trees, carrying the smell of jasmine from the bush by the fence.
Ethan sighed in his sleep, snuggled deeper into the blanket, his small hand wrapped around his T-Rex stuffed animal.
Sarah leaned her head on my shoulder, the locket around her neck catching the starlight.
“We’re really lucky, aren’t we?” she said.
Her voice was soft, quiet, like she didn’t want to break the perfect silence.
I nodded, looked up at the sky, at the bright cluster of stars right above us.
I thought of Lila, young and laughing, holding our baby in our first apartment.
I thought of Sarah, 22 and scared, walking into my shop in the rain.
I thought of Ethan, four years old and full of life, beating cancer, running around the yard in a dinosaur costume.
I thought of all the years of loss, of searching, of wondering if I’d ever be whole again.
I thought of the locket, the tiny silver rose that had traveled 22 years, across cities and heartbreak and loss, to bring us all back together.
“Yeah,” I said.
I squeezed Sarah’s hand, felt the two lockets warm against my chest, felt Ethan’s soft breathing from the hammock a few feet away.
“We really are.”
For the first time in 22 years, I didn’t feel the empty space in my chest, the hole Lila and the baby had left when they walked out that door.
It was filled now, filled with Sarah’s laugh, with Ethan’s yelling, with the smell of metal polish and rain and birthday cake, with the quiet certainty that we were all exactly where we were supposed to be.
We were home.
We were safe.
May you like
We were loved.
And nothing, and no one, would ever take that away from us again.
