As my mother turned toward the back of the album, a single loose photograph slipped from where it had been tucked against the lining, and fell.

I caught it before it reached the ground, and I turned it over, and my heart stopped for the second time in this story.

It was a photograph from only months earlier, taken in Nora’s room at St.

Jude’s.

Sarah, I would learn, had taken it quietly one afternoon without either of us noticing.

In it, Nora sat in her big wingback chair in her favorite cardigan, an old book of poetry open in her hands.

And on the floor beside her, leaning his head against her knee while she read aloud, was me.