Every Friday evening, after dinner, 17-year-old Lily would open the bottom drawer in the old oak cabinet and light a candle. She never explained why. She’d simply sit beside it, quietly, for exactly ten minutes. No one else in the family was allowed to touch that drawer.

Her younger brother Max thought it was weird. Her mother assumed it was some teen ritual. Her father, who had grown distant after losing his job, never asked.

Then, one night, Max asked, “Why always that drawer?”

Lily paused, her gaze locked on the flickering flame. “Because it’s where he still exists.”

That night, she told Max the truth. Two years ago, before he was born, their parents had a third child — a boy named Noah. He was born prematurely, lived just a few days, and passed quietly in the hospital. Her parents never spoke of him again. They moved houses. Threw away baby things. Buried their grief in busyness.

But Lily remembered.

She had been five then, old enough to recall his tiny face, and the sound of their mother sobbing behind the closed bathroom door for weeks. She wasn’t allowed at the funeral. But she saw the candle they lit for him, briefly, on the kitchen counter.

She saved that candle. Hid it in the drawer of the old cabinet they brought from the previous house. Every Friday, she honored him quietly.

Max, stunned, told their mother. She broke down — the kind of cry that empties the lungs. That night, for the first time in years, the whole family sat beside Lily and the candle. No one said much, but they didn’t have to.

The drawer stayed open that night. And for the first time, the house felt full again.