Six years ago, I buried one of my newborn twins.
Last week, my daughter came home from school and asked me to pack lunch for her sister.
At first, I smiled.
Kids say strange things. They mix up names, invent stories, imagine friends that don’t exist. I thought it was one of those moments.
But Junie didn’t look like she was joking.
She stood in the doorway, backpack half open, eyes bright like something important had just happened.
“Mom, tomorrow you need to pack another lunchbox,” she said.
“For who?” I asked, still rinsing dishes.
“For my sister.”
Something inside me tightened.
“You don’t have a sister, sweetheart.”
She frowned, confused, almost annoyed that I didn’t understand.
“Yes, I do. Her name is Lizzy. She sits next to me. She looks just like me… but her hair is parted the other way.”
I felt the air leave my chest.
Kids notice details like that. Small, specific things.
Too specific.
Before I could say anything else, she pulled something out of her backpack.
Her little pink camera.
I had given it to her for her first day of school so she could take pictures and tell me about her day.
She placed it in my hand, smiling proudly.
“I took a picture of us.”
My fingers felt numb as I scrolled through the images.
And then I saw it.
Two girls standing side by side near the cubbies.
Same height. Same eyes. Same little freckle under the eye.
My daughter…
and another child who looked exactly like her.
Not similar.
Not close.
Exactly.
My stomach dropped.
“Junie… have you ever seen her before today?”
She shook her head.
“No. But she said we should be friends because we look the same.”
That night, I didn’t sleep.
I kept staring at that photo, zooming in, zooming out, trying to find something—anything—that would make it make sense.
But deep down, something was already breaking open inside me.
Something I had buried years ago.
Because six years earlier… I had given birth to twins.
Junie… and Eliza.
Only one of them came home with me.
They told me the other didn’t survive.
Complications.
That was the word they used.
I never saw her. Never held her. Never got to say goodbye.
I just learned how to live with the silence she left behind.
Or at least… I thought I had.
The next morning, my hands were shaking on the steering wheel as I drove Junie to school.
She talked the whole way there, like it was any normal day.
About crayons. About her teacher. About what Lizzy liked to eat.
I barely heard her.
When we got there, she grabbed my hand and pointed.
“There she is.”
