Our homes shelter our bodies and our hearts. The track house my parents raised me in lived on in certain places even after we bought the Victorian last spring. Little trinkets and the better preserved pieces that had survived our three young children came along with relics from my own childhood room. It was like a snowball from every house we’d ever lived in; our lives finally assembling into something we completely called our own.

That fall Brandon took a sledge hammer to the wall on the southeast side of the kitchen. He found the yellowed half disintegrated blue prints in the attic and found four feet of space which we could use during the renovation.

It was a little room, probably a closet or cold storage. The natural dampness of the house and the weather had eaten away almost everything. All we found were some teeth, a mop of black hair and a gold chain with a cameo charm.

We moved a week later but haven’t been able to leave her behind.