A week later, I attended Jack’s retirement party. Not because we were rekindling some great romance, and definitely not because life was suddenly turning into a movie.
Because after that many years, I finally wanted to meet the man who had been carrying the same unanswered question.
Near the end of the evening, Miles started the slideshow. Photographs filled the screen. Childhood, college, marriage, parenthood. Entire decades passing one image at a time.
Then a familiar photograph appeared. A young woman laughing into the wind, and a young man standing beside her.
For a moment, the room disappeared.
Jack noticed it too. When I glanced toward him, he was already looking at me. Neither of us smiled. Neither of us looked away, because we were both thinking the same thing.
I had spent an entire weekend cutting Jack out of every photograph I owned. And 20 years later, I discovered he had spent those same years keeping the originals.
