“Laura.”
Something in her voice made me sit up immediately.
“There’s been an accident.”
David survived the fire initially.
His mother called from the hospital.
He had been badly burned.
“They’re keeping him asleep,” she told me.
“Can I come?”
“Not yet.”
I spent the next three days waiting.
Then his mother called again.
David was dead.
Even now, those words feel too simple for what they did to me.
David was dead.
His family’s house had been destroyed.
His mother told mine they were taking his remains out of state to be buried near relatives.
I wasn’t invited.
I didn’t get to see him.
I didn’t get to say goodbye.
And before I fully understood what was happening, his family had left town.
Life continued because life has the terrible habit of continuing whether you are ready or not.
I eventually married.
Had two children.
Divorced.
Worked.
Aged.
Became a grandmother.
But through every move, every new house, every new chapter, that prom photograph stayed with me.
Ellie was still staring at it.
Then she tapped David’s face.
“That’s him.”
I smiled faintly.
“Who?”
“The man at school.”
My smile disappeared.
“What man?”
“The cleaner in the cafeteria. The new one.”
I stared at her.
“What are you talking about?”
“He looks like this.”
“Ellie, this picture is forty-two years old.”
She studied it again.
“Well… he looks older than this.”
I almost laughed.
“Obviously.”
Then she frowned.
“Maybe it’s his dad.”
I reached for the album.
“Why would you even think you know him?”
Ellie shrugged.
“He asked me if my grandma’s name was Laura.”
My hand froze.
The attic suddenly felt much smaller.
“What?”
“He asked if my grandma was named Laura.”
“When?”
“A few days ago.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“He asked if you went to Westbrook High.”
I stared at her.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I thought so.”
My heart began beating faster.
“What’s his name?”
“I think Tom.”
Not David.
Of course not David.
David had been dead for forty-two years.
Ellie pointed at the photograph again.
“What moon thing?”
“That.”
She touched the area above David’s left eyebrow.
There was a small crescent-shaped mark.
David had gotten it when he was sixteen after crashing my brother Charlie’s bicycle into a fence.
Most people never noticed it.
I closed the album.
