picture!”
Everyone groaned, which only made him more determined.
He arranged us beneath the maple tree with serious artistic authority. Diane beside Paul. Daniel beside my mother. My father next to me. Leo in front, holding Noah’s sketchbook in one hand and the remote timer in the other.
“Everybody smile,” he ordered.
The camera blinked.
For one second, we all stood together.
Messy.
Unfinished.
Alive.
The picture captured my mother laughing through tears, my father looking at me instead of the camera, Daniel’s hand resting gently on his birth mother’s shoulder, Diane holding Paul’s arm, and Leo grinning with Noah’s dimple bright on his face.
Behind us, the red birdhouse hung crooked in the maple tree.
Above us, the first evening star appeared.
When I look at that photo now, I no longer see only what was lost.
I see what survived.
I see a young man named Noah who
