“From your garage,” I said. “The day you moved in. When I was helping you unpack. It was in a box next to the garbage cans. The box said DUMP.” I paused. “I took it. Just that. Nothing else. I thought someday you might want it back.”
Vanessa stared at me.
“Why?” she said. “Why would you do that?”
“Because my mother threw away every picture of my father when he left,” I said. “And she spent the last ten years of her life asking me if I had any.” I looked at the album in her hands. “I didn’t. I wished I had. So I kept yours. Just in case.”
Around us, nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The soft jazz was still playing. Somebody’s kid was crying by the fence, and his mother was shushing him without looking away.
Vanessa opened the album.
The first page. The young woman in the white dress in front of the church, laughing with her head tipped back.
