“I know that, too.”
I peeled the plastic coating from one of the sheets and removed a picture, staring at it in the late afternoon sun, in the burnt ocher wash of what photographers called the Golden Hour. “That was us—my entire family—at Disneyland; in Anaheim—must have been about ’78 or ’79. I can tell by the hair.”
She leaned close to examine it, her own hair tickling my cheek. “Hard to believe that’s you. Mercy. You had prettier locks than I did. So did your brother.”
I rubbed the Polaroid between my thumb and forefinger, slowly, absently. “All dust,” I said quietly. “Everything in the picture, both the red and the white.” I laid back on the bed, feeling suddenly tired.
“Nonsense,” she said—and, to my astonishment, laid down next me. “You seem alive enough to me.”
And then she be
