Each year, my son planted sunflowers in memory of his twin sister who passed away—then one morning, we discovered them all cut down, with a white box left behind.

I found him at the kitchen table, the photograph under the yellow light.

“I keep trying to remember,” he said quietly, “if her left eyebrow always lifted like that when she was thinking.”

“Patrick…”

“What if she’s been waiting for us?”

The way he said it broke something in me.

Because I realized then that if this turned out to be a lie, it wouldn’t just continue reading …