He had not seen her face in 30 years. Not in a photograph, not in a dream, not in anything. He had been that thorough about it.
She looked so young. They all did. Absurdly young. The way you can only see in retrospect when you are old enough to know that 16 is just the beginning of everything, though it feels like the whole world at the time.
Her hair was tied up loosely, strands escaping at the sides. She was laughing with her whole face, the way some people do, nothing held back, nothing controlled. He remembered that laugh.
He put the photograph face down on the desk without knowing he was going to do it.
Then he looked back into the box.
There were a few folded letters at the bottom, old ones, the paper slightly yellow at the edges, the way paper goes when it has been kept too long in a box that is not quite airtight.
He took them out one by one. 2 were from Benjamin, written during a summer when Benjamin had gone to visit relatives in another city, joking, rambling letters full of observations about people he had met and food he had eaten. He set those aside.
The last one was different.