I didn’t know what to say to that.
Vanessa picked up the album. She held it in her lap. She opened it to the first page. The young woman in front of the church, laughing.
“I don’t even remember her,” she said quietly. “This girl. I don’t remember being her.”
“She’s still in there,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Because she stood in a garage and wrote DUMP on a box,” I said. “And then she couldn’t bring herself to actually put it out on the curb. It was sitting right next to the garbage cans. For a whole day. Waiting.”
Vanessa looked up at me.
“I was going to throw it out,” she said. “That night. And then I couldn’t. I went out three times to drag it to the curb. And I couldn’t. And then the next morning it was…” She stopped. “The next morning the album was gone. And I thought I’d finally done it. I thought I’d thrown it out in my sleep or something. And I cried for a whole day. And I didn’t know why.”
