I looked at the ribbon.

The ribbon had a length on it — nineteen and a quarter inches — and a date, and it was the same date.

I looked at the four photographs.

I had never looked at them.

I had never seen a photograph of my son.

In three of them he is being held and there are hands and part of a shirt and I did not, that night, register whose hands they were, and about four months later I did, and that was its own evening.

The fourth one is just him.