Samantha lifted it out and held it, and did not say anything, because there was nothing to add.

The empty frame said all of it.

I had put that frame in the box last, years ago, on an evening I can still remember, and I had almost not included it, because it felt too raw, too much like grief laid bare.

There is a photograph, in most families, of a mother and her daughter on the daughter’s wedding day, the two of them together, generations touching.

We would never have that photograph.