Chapter 3 - REBECCA’S PHOTOGRAPH
Rebecca chose that photograph herself.
Not as a memorial.
She was alive when she framed it.
Sophie was eighteen months old.
Rebecca sat beneath a maple tree in Central Park holding her.
Both were laughing at something outside the picture.
I took the photograph.
Rebecca printed it.
Bought a simple walnut frame.
Then wrote something on the back without telling me.
Apparently.
After Rebecca died, Sophie began sleeping with it near her bed.
Not in the bed.
Usually.
Once I found her hugging it and moved it because glass and toddlers are a bad combination.
She screamed so hard that I replaced the glass with acrylic.
That was fatherhood after death.
Changing frames so grief could survive bedtime.
Celeste entered our life thirteen months later.
We met through work.
She was an event consultant for a conference my firm sponsored.
Kind.
Funny.
Unthreatened, at first, by Rebecca’s existence.
She never asked me to take down wedding photographs.
Never told Sophie to stop talking about Mom.
That changed after our engagement.
Small.
“Maybe Rebecca’s clothes should go to storage.”
Reasonable.
“Maybe Sophie doesn’t need the photo at every meal.”
Also reasonable.
Then:
“She uses Rebecca when she doesn’t like my rules.”
I asked what that meant.
Celeste said:
“When I say bedtime, she says Mommy let her stay awake.”
Sophie was three.
Three-year-olds weaponize whichever parent is not in the room.
I laughed.
Celeste did not.
Then the framed photograph became a battleground.
Celeste once moved it from Sophie’s bedroom to a downstairs shelf.
Sophie found it.
Brought it back.
Another time Celeste told her:
“Mommy is in your heart. You don’t have to carry the picture.”
Good grief language in the wrong context.
Sophie answered:
“I want picture.”
That should have ended it.
Instead Celeste continued.
I intervened.
“The picture stays.”
She smiled.
“Fine.”
I thought we had settled it.
Three weeks before the suitcase, Sophie said something odd.
“Celeste says Mommy left bad things.”
“What things?”
She shrugged.
“Paper.”
I asked Celeste.
She looked startled.
Then laughed.
“I said Rebecca left a lot of paperwork. The estate boxes are a disaster.”
True.
There were estate boxes.
Rebecca had been meticulous while healthy and chaotic near the end.
Cancer had a way of turning organized lives into pharmacy receipts and unfinished lists.
I never searched every piece.
Rebecca’s probate lawyer handled what mattered.
Or I thought she had.
May you like
The name Nora Keene did not match the lawyer I knew.
That made the photograph more troubling.
