My uncle once asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ when I was already 27 years old. From that moment, I started to be afraid of him. And a few days later, when he took me to a hotel outside the city, he leaned close to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, come up to my room…’”

Richard pulled a folded photograph from the envelope.

He placed it on the desk and slid it toward me.

It showed two young men standing outside a white house. One was unmistakably Richard, although he looked barely twenty-five. The other was my father, wearing a smile I had never seen in any family photograph.

Between them stood a young woman.

She was holding a baby.

I leaned closer.

“Who is she?”

Richard’s voice became barely audible.

“Her name was Claire.”

“Was?”

“She died twelve years ago.”

I looked at the photograph again.

The baby was wrapped in a pale blanket, its face turned toward the woman’s shoulder.

Something about the child’s tiny hand bothered me. It was clenched around a small silver bracelet.

I had seen that bracelet before.

Not in a photograph.

In my mother’s jewelry box.

A silver bracelet with a tiny heart-shaped charm, kept inside a velvet pouch that my mother never allowed me to touch.