Chapter 8
Spring came to Dallas that year, warm and bright, the trees blooming pink and white all over the city.
Ethan started playing soccer in a local league for four-year-olds.
I went to every single game, standing on the sidelines, yelling louder than anyone else, even when he spent most of the time chasing dandelions instead of the ball.
Sarah came too, when she didn’t have class, taking a hundred photos of him in his tiny blue uniform, his hair sticking up under his soccer cleats.
He scored his first goal in April, kicked it right into the wrong net, but we all cheered anyway, lifting him up on our shoulders, buying him ice cream after the game to celebrate.
Sarah finished her first semester of nursing classes with straight A’s.
Her professors said she was one of the best students they’d ever had, that she had a real gift with kids.
She got a part-time job at the children’s hospital that summer, working as a nurse’s aide on the oncology floor, the same floor where Ethan had been treated.
She said it felt like coming full circle, like she was giving back some of the kindness the nurses had shown her and Ethan when they needed it most.
I expanded the shop that year, adding a small custom design studio in the back, hiring two more part-time employees to help with the extra business.
The news story had brought in customers from all over the state, people wanting custom lockets for their own kids, their own parents, their own lost loved ones.
I taught Sarah how to make jewelry on the weekends, when she didn’t have class or work.
She was a natural, her hands steady, her eye for detail just like mine.
She made a tiny silver rose charm for Ethan’s necklace, just like the one on the locket, engraved it with his name and the date he went into remission.
He wore it every single day, never took it off, even in the shower.
We took our first real family vacation that summer, a week at the beach in Galveston.
Ethan had never seen the ocean before.
He ran into the waves screaming, his arms out wide, as Sarah and I followed him, laughing, holding his hands when the water got too deep.
We built sandcastles, collected seashells, ate fried shrimp every night at the little shack down the road from our hotel.
We took a photo on the last day, the three of us standing in the sand, the sun setting behind us, Ethan holding a seashell in each hand, Sarah and I with our arms around each other, all of us grinning so wide our cheeks hurt.
I had it framed, hung it right behind the counter at the shop, front and center, so every customer who walked in could see it.
That fall, Ethan started kindergarten.
He was so excited the night before he could barely sleep, laying out his dinosaur backpack, his new dinosaur lunchbox, his first-day-of-school outfit on the chair next to his bed.
We walked him to class the first day, holding his hands, his backpack almost as big as he was.
He didn’t even look back when we got to the classroom door, just ran in to play with the blocks, yelling “Bye Mom! Bye Grandpa!” over his shoulder.
Sarah cried a little as we walked back to the car, but they were happy tears.
“He’s growing up so fast,” she said.
I squeezed her hand.
“I know,” I said.
“But we get to be here for all of it. That’s the gift.”
We visited Lila’s grave again on the anniversary of her death that October.
We brought white roses, told her all the news—Ethan in kindergarten, remission, Sarah’s grades, the shop expansion, the beach trip.
Sarah told her about her job at the hospital, about the little kids she took care of, about how she tried to be as kind to them as Lila had been to her.
I told her about the shop, about all the people who’d heard our story, about how the locket had brought us back together, just like she’d known it would.
We stood there for a long time, quiet, as the wind blew through the trees, rustling the leaves.
For a second, I swear I could smell her perfume, the soft lavender she’d worn every day, could hear her laugh, light and bright, just like I remembered.
Sarah squeezed my hand.
“She’s here,” she said.
May you like
I nodded.
I knew she was.
