At the kitchen table, the photo lay between us like a crime scene, and every memory I had of that Tuesday in April began to rearrange itself into something uglier. Logan kept saying the word alive as if repeating it could rewind time, as if it might resurrect the girl we’d buried in stories and lilies. When my mother arrived, she didn’t ask to see the picture. She sat down as if she’d been expecting this moment since the day I’d first screamed in a hospital bed. Her confession was too smooth to be spontaneous: Lily hadn’t died; Aaron had sold the silence, traded my sedated body for a forged signature and a private adoption. A healthy baby rerouted while I was told she’d simply stopped. Logan listened without blinking, jaw locked, the boy who’d spent his childhood tending a grave that held nothing but air. “Then we’re going to find h…” he said, his voice too calm, and in that calm I heard the beginning of a different kind of stor… Continues…