Eight years after I buried my only daughter, I thought I had finally learned how to live with the loss.
The pain had never disappeared.
It had simply become quieter.
My husband, Paul, and I had spent years learning how to be a family of two. We had no other children, and after losing Maggie, I could never bring myself to consider having another.
Then one morning, a sixteen-year-old girl walked into my classroom.
The moment I saw her, my entire body went still.
She had the same dark curls.
The same gray-green eyes.
The same tiny crease beside her mouth.
Even the nervous way she reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear was exactly the way my daughter used to do it.
