You made me feel like I mattered.

I sat down.

I couldn’t stop crying.

All those years, Julian had believed he had failed Lily.

So he spent the rest of his life making things for children who needed someone to believe they mattered.

He couldn’t save his daughter.

But he could make another child feel seen.

He couldn’t repair his family.

But he could give other families something beautiful.

He couldn’t change the night Lily died.

But he could decide what the rest of his life would mean.

And suddenly I understood something.

The red dress wasn’t his only masterpiece.

It was the first.

Everything he made afterward was another attempt to answer the same unbearable question:

What do you do with love when the person you made it for is gone?

You give it somewhere to go.

---

Chapter 13 — The Workshop

Caleb and I decided not to sell the building.

Instead, we reopened the tailor shop.

We called it Lily’s House.

There was a small room for sewing.

A room where children could learn.

A donation area for clothing.

And one quiet room at the back where hospital patients and their families could sit.

We also started a program for people who were dying alone.