The young man in the picture stood beside my grandma, not touching her, but close enough that the space between them felt intimate. He wore a dark jacket and had that same calm, knowing expression Tyler sometimes had when he was teasing me.
My throat tightened.
I looked down and felt everything inside me go cold.
The caption under the photo read, “I love you, and I will always find you, my Miss Harrison.”
My hands went pale.
The room kept moving around me. My aunt was laughing at another picture. My mother was asking Grandma about a girl named Ruth. Grandma was smiling into her tea.
None of them saw what I saw.
None of them noticed that my whole world had tilted.
I quickly closed the album, trying not to show anything. I didn’t want to scare my grandma, so I just said I wanted to look through it again later and took it home.
Grandma patted my cheek before I left.
“You always loved stories, Hilary.”
I forced a smile. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
But I couldn’t calm down the entire evening.
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