Birthdays. School performances. Holidays. Graduation.
My mother was missing from almost all of them.
She had always been the person behind the camera.
One Sunday, I found her sitting on the living room floor with our old albums spread around her.
She held a photograph from my graduation.
“I’m in this picture,” she said.
I leaned over.
The photograph showed me holding my diploma beside a flower bed.
“Where?”
She tapped the empty space beside me.
“I was standing right there. I took the picture.”
I sat down beside her.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then she closed the album.
“I think I’d like to learn photography properly.”
I smiled.
“Really?”
“Really.”
She enrolled in an evening photography class at the community center.
That was where she met Morgan.
Morgan had known my father long before the fire.
They had worked together in a small renovation business, repairing houses and managing construction projects. When I was little, Morgan sometimes visited on Saturday mornings with doughnuts and stories about jobs that had gone wrong.
