A month after my 12-year-old daughter passed away, I found her missing backpack hidden under her twin sister’s bed, what was inside made my hands shake
My daughters, Sutton and Eliza, were twins, but they hated when people treated them like two copies of the same child.
Sutton was louder. She made friends in grocery-store lines and laughed before she reached the funny part of her own jokes.
Eliza watched first and spoke later. She liked drawing, hated crowds, and somehow remembered every tiny promise anyone ever made to her.
They fought constantly over ordinary things. Clothes. Chargers. Who had eaten the last cookie. Who had taken too long in the bathroom.
Then ten minutes later, I would hear them laughing upstairs as though nothing had happened.
That summer, they spent nearly two months with my mother, who lived in a small coastal town three hours away. Mom had been asking for years to have them for a long summer visit, and at twelve, the girls were finally old enough that I felt comfortable saying yes.
They loved it.