Back then, I had believed his kindness would always be something I could lean on.

I set the picture aside rather than tearing it up.

The good memories had been real.

So had what happened later.

I didn’t have to destroy one truth to recognize the other.

I hung a framed picture of my mother in the hallway and placed Paisley’s first hospital photograph next to it.

She was swaddled and frowning at the camera, as if she’d arrived with a list of things the world needed to improve.

I hoped that when she was older, she would see the wall not as a record of a broken marriage but as a record of people who loved her.