Then I noticed faint writing beneath those words.
Almost rubbed away.
I held the photograph toward the sunlight.
A date.
August 3, 2009.
More than a year after Gia vanished.
My daughter had survived at least another year.
The realization broke something open inside me.
Not relief exactly.
Not grief either.
Something in between.
I looked at the porch in the picture.
White railing.
Blue door.
A hanging fern.
Then I noticed the edge of someone’s hand resting on Gia’s shoulder.
No face.
Just a hand.
“Do you know where this was taken?”
Dana shook her head.
“No.”
Then she removed the bag and set it beside me.
“You should have this.”
I ran my fingers across the crooked handle.
“I can’t.”
“It belonged to her.”
I looked at Dana.
“No. It was hers.”
For sixteen years, I had frozen Gia at seventeen.
I kept her toothbrush.
Renewed her library card.
