It was about three feet long.
Maybe two feet high.
Heavy enough that he carried it carefully with both hands.
He set it on the patio in front of Hannah.
“What is that?”
Daniel looked at me.
Then back at our daughter.
“You weren’t born alone.”
Hannah stared at him.
“What?”
“You had a twin sister.”
Silence.
I watched the information reach her without understanding.
Then understanding arrived.
“What?”
“Her name was Rose Elizabeth.”
“Rosie,” I whispered.
Hannah turned toward me.
My face told her it was true.
“You had another baby?”
“No.”
My voice broke.
“I had two.”
She stared at me.
“What happened to her?”
Daniel answered.
“She died when you were nine days old.”
Hannah didn’t cry.
That frightened me more than screaming would have.
She just stood there.
Completely still.
Then she looked at the object beneath the canvas.
Daniel put one hand on it.
“I started this the night she died.”
He removed the cloth.
And I stopped breathing.
It was a wooden chest.
But calling it a chest doesn’t explain what Daniel had made.
The wood was dark walnut, smooth from years of sanding and oiling.
Across the lid were two intertwined trees.
Their trunks began separately.
Then their branches grew together.
Hundreds of tiny leaves had been carved into the wood.
Some were darker.
Some lighter.
At the center of the two trunks were two names.
HANNAH
and
ROSIE
I covered my mouth.
“Daniel…”
He looked at me.
“I used the crib.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“What?”
“The second crib.”
The one I’d taken apart.
The one I’d stacked against the garage wall eighteen years earlier.
Daniel had never thrown it away.
He had cut it apart.
Piece by piece.
And turned it into this.
Hannah reached toward the lid.
Both hands rested on the carved trees.
She still didn’t speak.
Daniel opened the chest.
Inside were eighteen compartments.
One for every year.
And suddenly I understood where my husband had gone every September 9th.
The first compartment held a hospital bracelet.
ROSE E. MILLER
6 lbs 1 oz.
