We carried the other albums onto the porch.
Ruth had known Lauren since infancy.
She’d helped me watch her during late shifts and driven her to school when the Buick refused to start in winter.
Their relationship was affectionate and argumentative.
Ruth had once caught Lauren lying about a school assignment and made her complete it at the kitchen table while delivering a forty-minute lecture on shortcuts.
Lauren called her Aunt Ruth even though they weren’t related.
As we sorted photographs, Ruth picked up one with a bent corner.
“Look at this.”
Lauren and Ethan stood inside a restaurant, smiling toward the photographer.
Along the edge of the frame, a family picture hanging on the wall showed me beside Lauren years earlier.
The image had been removed from its sleeve.
Folded.
Then replaced.
“This wasn’t bent before,” I said.