The picture. The exact photograph.
For a second, nobody spoke.
Then Maddy laughed nervously. “What does that mean?”
Miles lowered the frame. “My dad has this exact photograph.”
Nobody seemed to know what to do with that.
I stared at him. “That’s impossible.”
My pulse had started racing. Slowly, Miles pulled out his phone, then opened a photo, and turned the screen toward me.
I stopped breathing.
Because I recognized it instantly. The same photograph, the same moment, the same smile, the same wind-blown hair. Except one thing was different.
Jack was standing beside me with his arm around my shoulders, both of us laughing at something beyond the edge of the frame.
For a moment, the room disappeared. I could only stare.
Twenty years earlier, I’d spent an entire weekend cutting Jack out of every photograph I owned. I remembered cutting this one. I remembered the scissors. The trembling hands. The anger. The tears. I remembered reducing an entire relationship into a space.
