We were both laughing at something, mid-laugh, caught forever, two people entirely unbothered by the world outside that room, a grandmother and a grandson who were nothing of the kind by blood and everything of the kind by choice.

I did not remember the moment being photographed.

I remembered a hundred afternoons exactly like it.

I turned the photograph over.

On the back, in Nora’s shaking, elegant hand, were two lines.

The son I was given didn’t care, she had written.

The son who stayed gave me everything.

I read it once, and then again, and a single hot tear spilled over and dropped onto the paper, and I pressed my thumb gently against the ink as if I could somehow touch her through it.