I still see her fingers on the faded fabric, the way her eyes shone when she asked me to wear it. I thought I was giving her a small kindness, stitching beadwork and memories back together. I didn’t understand I was also stitching a doorway to the past she’d learned to live without. When Griffin walked into that ballroom and saw me, it was like time stood up and demanded to be heard.
I replay that night more than I should. Her tears. His apology. The way they clung to each other like teenagers trapped in borrowed old bodies. People call it fate, a miracle, a gift at the end. Maybe they’re right. But I also saw the cost: the sharp, fresh grief of everything they never had. I don’t know if I gave her peace or pain. I only know she died finally knowing he hadn’t stopped loving her—and that knowing can be both a blessing and a wound that never fully closes.
