My 16-year-old daughter stayed up sewing a dress for a classmate and gave away the cardigan her late father had given her. Then the girl’s mother handed me a small box, and I ran upstairs to find my daughter’s window open and her bed empty. Nothing prepared me for why.
“Lily?”
I pushed my daughter’s bedroom door open with my shoulder. My right hand was clenched around a small object so tightly that my nails cut into my palm. Twenty minutes earlier, it had shattered everything I believed about my relationship with my daughter.
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