I was starting to lose hope. I’m ashamed to say that, but it’s true. A year in, I was starting to believe that the daughter I’d known was gone as surely as if she’d died in that car, and that this quiet, folded-up child was who I had now, and that I’d better learn to love her too, even as I grieved the one I’d lost.
And then Claire’s wedding invitation came in the mail.
Claire is my cousin. She’s younger than me by about ten years, closer to a big sister for Mia than a cousin-once-removed. Claire had been coming around all through the hard year — she was one of the only ones who never got weird about the wheelchair, who talked to Mia exactly like she always had, who’d flop down on the floor next to the chair and paint Mia’s nails and gossip about celebrities.
