I kept coming back, as we turned the pages, to the word one of Arthur’s men had used.

Worthless paper.

That was what they had called it, this beach and this newborn and this porch in summer, this entire eighty-four-year life reduced to refuse by men in a hurry to catalog the valuable things.

And I understood, looking at those photographs, that the word had told the truth about the men who said it, not about the paper.

To Arthur and his people, a photograph of a young woman laughing on a beach sixty years ago was worthless, because it could not be sold, could not be leveraged, could not improve anyone’s position.