For a long moment, he didn’t answer. Then my father-in-law put down his fork, reached up, and unclasped the chain from his neck for the first time any of us had ever seen. He opened the locket and set it on the tablecloth. Inside was a photograph of my mother-in-law at twenty, laughing on a beach. “This one is your mother’s,” he said quietly. “I’ve worn it since the day I married her.”
My husband stared at it. “Then who’s the other girl?” His mother made a small sound and pressed her napkin to her lips. My father-in-law got up without a word, went out to his truck, and came back with a small wooden box. He opened it and lifted out a tiny gold locket on a child’s chain. Inside was a photograph of a little girl with dark curls and a gap-toothed grin.
“Her name was Lily,” he said. “She was your sister. She was three. She got sick the winter before you were born, and she didn’t get better.” His voice didn’t break. I think he had said these words to himself so many times, alone in that truck, that they had worn smooth. “This was her necklace. She used to put it on me and say, ‘Daddy’s pretty.’ I carry it with me everywhere. Your mother couldn’t bear to see it in the house.”
My husband had gone completely white. He was thirty-four years old, and he had never known. My mother-in-law finally spoke, very softly. “We decided not to tell you while you were little. Then we didn’t know how to tell you when you were big. Every year it got harder.”
My daughter climbed into her grandfather’s lap and looked at the photo. “She looks like me,” she said. She did. She looked exactly like her. My father-in-law held her close and cried for the first time in thirty-five years, right there at the Sunday table.
Lily’s locket hangs in their living room now, in a frame next to the family photos. My mother-in-law put it there herself. And every Sunday, before dinner, my daughter goes over to it and says, “Hi, Aunt Lily,” like she’s known her all her life.
