Walter was smiling, not the polite smile people use in formal portraits, but the unguarded smile of someone who had finally found useful work.

“And the ribbon?” I asked.

“Anna used to wear it in her hair when she was little.

Grandpa kept it in the box.

I think he wanted you to know that when he saw your daughters, he remembered the love he hadn’t lost, even if he’d convinced himself he had.”

For the first time, I understood why he had looked at me so intensely in the rain.

He had been seeing two generations at once: the family he missed and a young mother trying to hold hers together.