And on the first day we opened, Caleb brought something with him.
The red dress.
He had asked me if I wanted to keep it.
I told him it belonged with him.
He shook his head.
“No.”
He looked at the dress.
“Dad wanted you to have it.”
So I placed it inside a glass case in the center of the workshop.
Beside it, I put a small card.
It read:
For Lily.
For every child who deserves to feel loved.
And beneath that:
Your masterpiece lives on.
Chapter 14 — What Julian Really Left Me
People sometimes ask me what Julian left me.
They assume I will say the building.
The money.
The property.
The business.
They assume the strange seven-day marriage somehow turned into an unexpected inheritance story.
But that isn’t what Julian left me.
He left me something far more difficult.
A reason to keep loving.
Before I met him, I thought grief meant learning how to stop hurting.
