“Son, you cannot come home and say something like this without being absolutely certain.”
“I am certain.”
One of his sisters began crying.
“Stop it, Noah,” she whispered. “Mom is gone.”
Noah looked at her, then at me.
“I didn’t expect anyone to believe me.”
He reached into his pocket and placed his phone on the kitchen table.
“That’s why I took a picture.”
The photograph was slightly blurred because the woman had been moving through a crowd.
But her face was visible.
The room seemed to narrow around me.
The shape of her eyes.
The curve of her mouth.
The familiar way she held one hand near her chest while laughing.
It was Claire.
Or someone who looked so much like her that my mind could not accept what I was seeing.
Then Noah opened a five-second video.
The woman walked beside an unfamiliar man. She threw her head back and laughed.
