“I think deep down you really wanted us to be sisters again, Haylee. You ran away, but you thought you would be back, maybe even for Christmas. You’d expect Mother would have two of everything she had bought for us. We’d each kiss her cheeks, and she would kiss each of ours.
“Then we’d play Christmas songs in duet, and there would be lots of laughter and hugs and, most important, promises. We’d go to bed together, talking about boyfriends and how we were going to be married in the same ceremony and take the same honeymoon and have children at the same time.
“We were supposed to grow old and die together at the exact same moment.
“So you see, it doesn’t matter what happened. I’m going to live for both of us just the way we had planned. Nothing’s changed. Mother will still see two of us, and even though he doesn’t want to, so will Daddy.
“To lose you, really lose you, I’d have to live in a world without mirrors. You will live on in my reflection just the way I would in yours.
“What do you think of that?”
I stood there for a moment, listening to her laughter and imagining us holding hands as we ran across the lawn to greet the guests who had come to our fifth birthday party, while we recited, “Haylee and Kaylee, Kaylee and Haylee.”
I knelt, put my palm on the freshly turned earth, whispered her name, and then left, feeling renewed confidence in the happiness that would come.