And I know that makes what I’m saying difficult to believe.”

He didn’t touch me.

He didn’t insist.

Instead, he reached into his pocket and drew out a small, weathered photograph of a young woman standing beside him at a lakeside pier.

“Her name was Evelyn Brooks,” he said.

“And thirty-three years ago, I loved her.”

I recognized the woman instantly.

It was my mother, laughing in a way I hadn’t seen since childhood.