‘This is for you,’ she said, sliding it toward me before the menus arrived.

‘It’s your birthday,’ I protested.

‘Open it anyway.’

Inside was a framed photograph I had never seen.

I was seventeen, holding Lily and June on the steps outside our old apartment.

Mrs.

Avery stood beside me, grinning into the camera.

I looked tired and proud and much younger than my daughters were now.