Then small pieces started coming back to me.
Low bookshelves.
Beanbags.
A paper sun hanging crooked from a ceiling tile.
I could almost smell the dusty carpet.
Then another detail surfaced.
Yellow.
I stared harder at the photograph.
“Her glasses were yellow.”
Claire blinked.
“What?”
“Nora’s glasses. They were yellow.”
Claire looked down at the picture.
“They were purple.”
“No,” I said. “They were yellow.”
She stared at me for a moment.
Then she laughed.
“She painted them.”
“What?”
“With yellow nail polish. My mother almost lost her mind.”
The memory arrived so suddenly that I had to sit down.
A girl sitting cross-legged in thick yellow glasses, holding a paperback much too close to her face.
I still couldn’t remember what book she was reading.
But I remembered being annoyed with her.
“You want to go there?” Claire asked.
I looked up at her.
She immediately realized what she’d
