My father stopped talking about her almost entirely.
And I spent years wondering whether my sister was alive somewhere, whether she had been hurt, whether she had left willingly, or whether something terrible had happened to her.
The not knowing was the worst part.Birthday celebration ideas
Death, as unbearable as it is, at least gives you something definite to grieve.
Laura left us with a question mark.
I carried that question into adulthood.
Into marriage.
Into motherhood.
Then grandmotherhood.
I learned to live around it.
But I never really stopped waiting.
Even decades later, whenever I saw a woman with Laura’s hair or heard a familiar laugh in a crowded store, some part of me still turned.
Then one ordinary afternoon, my granddaughter Sophie walked into my kitchen and brought the past with her.
She was sixteen then.Knitwear
Almost exactly the age Laura and I had been when everything changed.
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