A Photograph at the Bottom of a Box

Chapter 1: Face Was Unclear

The first time I saw the photograph, I thought someone had made a mistake.

It was an old photograph, the kind people usually throw away without looking twice. It was sitting at the bottom of a cardboard box in my mother’s attic, buried beneath birthday cards, broken Christmas decorations, and a stack of letters tied together with a faded blue ribbon.

The photograph showed a garden.

Nothing unusual.

Just a small backyard with an old wooden fence, a patch of overgrown grass, and the corner of a brick house disappearing into the darkness. It looked like hundreds of other gardens in the neighborhood where I grew up.

But standing in the middle of that garden was a woman.

A tall, thin woman wearing a dark dress.

Her face was unclear. Not hidden exactly, but blurred by the quality of the photograph. Her long black hair hung around her shoulders, and she stood completely still, looking toward the camera.

Toward me.

I turned the photograph over, expecting to find a date or a name.