I didn’t feel the cold pavement beneath my feet or the sharp air cutting into my lungs. I only knew I couldn’t stop. One thought kept pounding in my head: how did he find something that belonged to Lily?

Baxter was heading toward the old park at the edge of our neighborhood. The place Lily loved most. She used to sit there for hours with her sketchbook, completely absorbed. There was a small wooden bridge, a few weathered benches, and a tall maple tree that cast a wide shadow over the grass.

Once, sitting under that tree, she had looked at me and said quietly,
“Mom, even if I wasn’t here anymore, you’d still find me.”

I had brushed it off, telling her never to say things like that.

Now those words echoed inside me like a wound that wouldn’t close.

Baxter suddenly stopped. He dropped the bright yellow sweater onto the ground and began scratching frantically at the damp soil. I stepped closer—and saw it.

The corner of a backpack, half-buried. Small. Blue. With a stitched yellow star on the front pocket.

Lily’s backpack.

My legs gave out. I fell to my knees, my hands shaking so badly I could barely unzip it. Inside was her drawing pad. The pages were slightly wrinkled from moisture, but the drawings were still there. A house. The three of us—Lily, her father, and me—standing together, smiling.

Above the drawing, written in uneven childlike letters, were the words:
“If I’m not here, I’m still with you.”

In that moment, everything went silent.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just sat there as Baxter slowly came closer and rested his head against my shoulder. He knew. Somehow, he had always known.

Later, the police told us that after the accident, someone had taken personal items from the roadside. They never reported it. Never came forward. But Baxter recognized Lily’s scent. He kept searching for her. Day after day. Even after we had buried her.

That evening, I entered her room for the first time since the funeral. Everything was exactly as she had left it. I took another sweater from the shelf—identical to the one Baxter had found—and pressed it to my chest. That was when I understood something I had been fighting against: the pain doesn’t disappear. It changes. It settles into you.

A month later, I returned to the park. I tied a small wooden plaque to the maple tree. It read:
“Here, a little girl once sat and drew, loving life with her whole heart.”

Baxter still stands by the door every morning, staring toward the road. Sometimes he lets out a quiet whine. I don’t stop him anymore.

Because now I know—
some souls never truly leave.
They simply stay in a different way.