PART 2
The photograph slipped from the bottom of the box and landed faceup on the kitchen table, its glossy surface catching the pale October sunlight.
I reached for it automatically, still trembling from the shock of what I’d found beneath the stack of documents, but the moment my eyes settled on the two faces staring back at me, my fingers stopped moving.
The woman in the picture had dark hair tucked behind one ear, and the man beside her wore a crooked smile I had known since the day he was born.
I knew every line of that smile, every familiar angle of that face, and I knew with a certainty that made the room seem to tilt beneath me that I was looking at my son and his wife.
Daniel and Elena were alive.
For several seconds, my mind refused to accept what my eyes were telling me.
I leaned closer to the photograph, as though the distance between my face and the paper might account for the impossible thing I was seeing.
Daniel’s hair was shorter than I remembered it, and there was a faint shadow beneath his eyes, but he was unmistakably my boy.
Elena stood pressed against his side, one hand curled around his arm, her expression serious and watchful in a way that made my stomach tighten.
I turned the photograph over, expecting a date, an address, anything that might explain why it existed.
The back was stained yellow at the corners, and someone had written a few words in blue ink that had faded but remained legible.
October 18.
Morning after.
Beneath those words was the name of a roadside motel in Ash County, followed by a room number.
I read the date again, silently moving my lips around the numbers.
Full part 2 TO CONTINUE READING PLEASE SEE PAGE 2
