So I drove her to a department store.
She tried on everything.
A black dress.
A navy one.
A green one.
A floral one.
Then a gold sequined dress that made her laugh so hard she had to sit down.
“You look like a disco ball,” I told her.
“That’s the goal.”
Then she disappeared into the fitting room.
A minute later she came out wearing red.
Simple.
Bright.
Elegant.
She turned toward the mirror.
For once, she did not joke.
“What do you think?”
I looked at her reflection.
Her hair was thin from treatment.
She had lost weight.
Her face looked older than fifteen.
But in that red dress, for a moment, I saw the young woman she was supposed to become.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
She turned sideways.
“Too bright?”
“No.”
“Too dramatic?”
“Probably.”
She grinned.
“Perfect.”
I bought it.
Mark later took her shopping for shoes.
She chose red heels that were completely impractical.
When she came home wearing them, she almost fell in the hallway.
Ethan laughed so hard he had to lean against the wall.
Lily threw a cushion at him.
She practiced walking in those shoes for weeks.
The dress stayed hanging in her closet.
The tags remained attached.
Then everything changed.
The leukemia returned.
This time, treatment did not work the way we hoped.
We traveled to another hospital.
We tried new medications.
We spoke with specialists.
We prayed.
I made promises to God that I had no authority to make.
Take ten years from me.
Take twenty.
Take anything.
Just leave my daughter here.
But life does not bargain.
Near the end, Lily knew.
No one had to tell her directly.
Children understand far more than adults want them to.
She stopped asking when she could return to school.
She started asking different questions.
“Did Ethan send his college application?”
“Did Dad remember to renew the car registration?”
“Mom, are you sleeping?”
She began giving away little things.
Books.
Bracelets.
A jacket to one of her friends.
She wrote cards.
She recorded voice messages.
She even gave one nurse her favorite stuffed animal because the nurse had a little daughter at home.
Ethan practically lived at the hospital.
He did homework beside her bed.
He brought her milkshakes when she could drink them.
He painted her toenails one night after she complained that I always chose boring colors.
The polish ended up on three toes, part of the bedsheet, and the floor.
Lily laughed until she started coughing.
That sound stayed with me.
Her laughter.
It was one of the last times I heard it.
She died on a rainy Thursday morning.
Mark was on one side of the bed.
I was on the other.
Ethan stood at the foot of the bed, completely silent.
Afterward, our family changed in ways I did not understand at first.
I needed to talk about Lily.
Mark could not.
I wanted her pictures everywhere.
Mark began putting some away.
I wanted her bedroom untouched.
Mark said he could not walk past it every day.
I wanted to tell stories.
He wanted silence.
Neither of us was wrong for grieving differently.
But we began hurting each other with our grief.
Mark returned to work less than two weeks after the funeral.
I thought he was running away.
He thought he was trying to keep functioning.
One afternoon I discovered boxes in Lily’s room.
He had packed some of her clothes.
I became furious.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to help.”
“By erasing her?”
