My hair was blowing across my face, and Nathan’s jacket was crooked.

I loved it immediately.

That evening, back in my apartment, I set the photograph beside the old one from their christening.

In the first picture the boys were infants, held close while their father stood smiling just beyond the frame.

In the new one they were grown, confident, and entirely themselves.

For years I had thought our story was about an empty chair.

It wasn’t.