I refused to stop.
When someone asked whether I had children, I said yes.
When I talked about the past, I said her name.
Gia.
I would not let my daughter become a silence everyone politely avoided.
Sixteen years passed like that.
Then, last July, I found myself walking the boardwalk in Ocean City.
It was hot and crowded.
Children carried melting ice cream.
Music poured from an arcade.
The air smelled of fried food, sunscreen, and salt.
I had bought a bottle of water and was walking nowhere in particular when I saw a woman coming toward me.
She had a knitted cream-colored bag over her shoulder.
I stopped so suddenly that the man behind me bumped into me.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
I barely heard him.
My eyes were fixed on the bottom of the bag.
On one crooked row of stitches.
I knew that mistake.
I had cried over that stupid mistake in my kitchen years earlier because Gia wanted the bag finished before the weekend.
