I thought, if I thought anything at all, that she was taking a nostalgic stroll through the family’s past, the way people do when someone is dying, reaching back through the albums for the years when everyone was young and whole.

I did not understand that I had just been probed — that my sister-in-law had reached out, delicately, to find out exactly how the most valuable thing I owned was titled, and that my easy, trusting answer had told her precisely what she needed to know.

She was not reminiscing.

She was taking inventory.

I understand it fully now, that afternoon with the album and the kettle, and it still makes my skin prickle to think of it.

She had not drifted to the photograph of our house by accident; she had steered there, patiently, past a dozen other pages, and asked the one question that mattered — whose name is on the deed — in the softest possible voice, folded inside a morning of nostalgia so that it would not feel like a question at all.