Claire sent a photograph in November.
It arrived in the mail, physical post, which was the kind of thing she did that I had come to understand as deliberate, the choosing of the postal letter over the email as a statement about the weight of what was being sent.
The photograph was old. Black and white, slightly soft in the way of photographs taken before everything was in focus, showing a woman and a small boy on a beach.
The woman was young. Dark hair, a smile that was genuine and unposed. The boy was perhaps four, looking at something outside the frame with the complete attention of small children who have found something interesting.
She had written on the back, in French and then below it in English:
This is the morning I remember most clearly. We were happy. I want him to know th
