Neither did his father. As far as either of them knew, I was simply Maddy’s mother. Nothing more.
Eventually, the shock faded. Life settled back into something resembling normal.
Then Miles called one Saturday morning.
“Any chance you and Maddy are free this afternoon?”
“For what?”
“My dad’s retirement party.”
I laughed. “That’s still three months away.”
“I know.” He sounded exhausted. “I’m trying to put together one of those photo montages.”
“Oh.”
“Three decades of photographs.” I could hear the suffering in his voice. “Thousands of them.”
Now I laughed harder. “That bad?”
“Worse.”
“Need help?”
“Please.”
A few hours later, our dining room table had disappeared beneath stacks of photographs. There were albums. Shoeboxes. Loose prints. Envelopes. Miles had brought enough pictures to document an entire lifetime.
Maddy sat beside him, sorting photographs into piles.
I worked at the scanner. For hours, we scanned and organized memories. College pictures. Wedding pictures. Vacation pictures. Work events. Birthday parties. Every version of Jack’s life except the one I’d been part of.
Which was exactly how it should have been.
Around mid-afternoon, I got up to make coffee. When I returned, Miles was gone.
“Bathroom?” I asked.
Maddy shrugged. “No idea.”
A minute later, he appeared in the doorway to the living room. But something was wrong. He looked confused, almost shaken. His eyes moved between me and something he was holding.
A photograph frame.
My stomach tightened immediately because I recognized it. A small picture that normally sat beside a ceramic pot holding a slightly struggling succulent. Nothing special. Just an old photograph I’d stopped noticing years ago.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
Miles didn’t answer.
He stared at the picture, at me, then back at the picture.
