The silver case clicked shut over the brooch, fitting snugly against the inner frame.

My past was no longer scattered in borrowed vanity drawers or hidden behind mirror frames in another family’s house.

I stood quietly under the porch lamp, looking at the silver pocket watch resting in my open palm.

By eight the next morning, the northern light coming through the high studio windows was clear and steady.

I stood in front of the tall oak easel, holding a thin sable brush dipped in natural solvent.

The oil painting on the frame was an eighteenth-century landscape my father had bought decades ago.