A few minutes later, she returned holding a tiny yellow flower.
Nothing special.
Just a small daisy.
She placed it carefully between two pages of a paperback she’d been reading.
Eli noticed.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving something.”
“For what?”
She smiled at him.
“You ask too many questions.”
That night, I forgot about the flower.
Eli didn’t.
Maya died eighteen days later.
She was eighteen years old.
And graduation was twenty-two days away.
There are moments in a parent’s life that divide everything into before and after.
Losing Maya was mine.
Our house changed immediately.
Her shoes were still by the back door.
Her shampoo was still in the shower.
A half-empty water bottle sat beside her bed.
Her graduation cap arrived in the mail two days after the funeral.
I left the package unopened on the kitchen counter for nearly a week because I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.
