He stopped at a smaller, faded photo of our grandfather sitting on the porch swing of his old lake cabin, holding a birch fishing rod with an eight-year-old Ethan on his lap.

Ethan carefully peeled the photo off its sticky backing and laid it flat in the plastic bin.

He turned the page, lifted out a glossy seven-by-ten print of our mother in her designer silk scarf at an estate auction, and set it on the concrete outside the box.

“We don’t need to keep those,” Ethan said quietly.

“No,” I said, taking the heavy red album from his hands and setting it on the pile to be thrown out.

“We don’t.”