Chapter 2 - The Photograph Mark Didn’t Want Me to See
I took Lily upstairs.
Not to pack everything.
Just enough for several nights.
Mark followed me.
“Claire, can we please talk before you turn this into something it isn’t?”
I shoved pajamas into Lily’s overnight bag.
“Your mother has a secret key to my house.”
“Our house.”
“Not the point.”
“She helps us.”
“I told you I didn’t want her here alone with Lily.”
“I know.”
“You said you agreed.”
“I did.”
I stopped packing.
“Then why does she have a key?”
Mark rubbed both hands over his face.
“I gave it back to her.”
The casualness of the admission almost stunned me more than the lie.
“Why?”
“For emergencies.”
“Whose emergencies?”
He didn’t answer.
The burgundy envelope was still in my sweater pocket.
I removed the photograph.
It showed Diane nearly thirty years younger.
Beside her stood two children.
One was unmistakably Mark at about six.
The other was a thin little girl, perhaps four, with dark-blonde pigtails.
She held half a dinner roll against her chest.
On the back someone had written:
Mark and Anna — December 1996.
Underneath, in different handwriting:
Don’t let her make food a punishment again.
I looked at my husband.
“Who wrote this?”
His face closed.
“My aunt.”
“Who’s Anna?”
“My sister.”
I knew Mark had a sister.
Anna Keller lived outside Portland, Oregon.
I had met her exactly once, at our wedding.
She left before dessert.
Mark always said Anna was dramatic, bitter, and determined to punish Diane for an unhappy childhood.
“What happened in 1996?”
“Nothing that matters now.”
I held up the picture.
“It matters enough that somebody saved it for almost thirty years.”
“Claire.”
“Did your mother do this to Anna?”
Mark looked toward Lily’s room.
His silence answered me.
My stomach dropped.
“And you left Lily alone with her anyway.”
“She’s not the same person.”
“How would I know? You lied to me.”
Mark finally raised his voice.
“I was trying to keep this family functioning.”
Lily whimpered from the bedroom.
We both stopped.
I walked in and found her standing beside the bed.
She pointed toward the overnight bag.
“Grandma house?”
“No, sweetheart.”
Her shoulders visibly relaxed.
That reaction cut through every explanation Mark might have offered.
I picked her up.
“We’re going to Aunt Emily’s.”
Mark blocked neither me nor the door.
But when I reached the stairs, he said quietly:
“Anna’s version isn’t the whole story.”
May you like
I turned around.
“Then you better figure out what yours is.”
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