I reached over to remove the cap. She started to lift up the focusing hood but her hand was trembling.

“I’m too shaky now,” she said. “Matty, will you take a picture of me and Aria?”

She walked my dad through focusing the camera and setting the aperture and shutter speed, and then told me to move the lamp and adjust the curtain for better light. While she instructed us, she seemed like her old self again.

After Dad had taken a couple of pictures of me and Joan, she had him push the tray table out to the foot of the bed, where he could set the camera and use the self-timer. He ran back to us after he pressed the shutter release, perching on Joan’s other side just in time for the click.

She felt so small between us. I could feel the flutter of her pulse in her wrist as I held her hand.

—

On Tuesday I didn’t see Steph.

Dad and I bought peach tarts from a bakery in Fairfax and brought them to Joan at the rehab center.

—

On Wednesday after work, Steph and I drove out behind the loading docks again. There was nowhere for us to be together except in her truck, and I felt a rising desperation inside me. I was leaving in one week.

Joan showed me how to take out the exposed film and load the camera with a fresh roll, and talked me through taking a couple of pictures. Through the viewfinder, Joan’s flipped image floated, mirage-like, on the speckled focusing screen, as if the camera were a door to a different time and place.

—

Thursday morning when I went into the kitchen for breakfast, Dad was sitting at the table, motionless. He looked up at me when I entered the room. His face was drained of all color except for rims of redness around his eyes, and instantly I knew something was wrong.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Your grandmother died last night,” he said.

I stared at him. “But she was getting better,” I said, as if this were an argument.

Deep lines appeared in his cheeks as he grimaced. “She—”

He didn’t continue, his shoulders heaving as a ragged breath came out of him. I went around the table and pulled out the chair beside him, sitting down. He wiped his hands across his eyes, leaving streaks of wetness on his face.

“She had a hemorrhagic stroke,” he said. “It was probably because of her previous stroke. She died early this morning. Tammy’s there now. I wanted to be here to tell you when you woke up.”

It made no sense to me. We had been taking pictures the night before. Today I was going to take the rolls of film to that camera store to have them developed.