I never told anyone that Byrd was wearing her favorite pair of earrings, and one had slipped halfway out. I carefully pushed it through the small hole in her ear. Never told anyone that Henry had my mouth. I held him, light as a ball of cotton, dark hair plastered to his little head, and I traced his lips. He had my lips and I wanted to cry because I would never hear him cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. And I can still smell the paint mingling with Yasmen’s perfume in the nursery when she told me to go. When she delivered the greatest loss of my life. When I lost her.
