Before leaving, I asked whether she’d ever approved of our wedding.

She smiled at the question.

“I approved of the possibility that two good people might make each other happy.

The deal?

Not so much.”

That night I gave Meredith the photograph.

She laughed at the enormous helmet and told me stories about stealing peaches from a supervisor’s lunchbox, with his permission, and about getting caught asleep in a pile of packing blankets.

I realized that after three years of marriage there were entire chapters of her life I had never asked her to tell me.