I find it ironic that even the brothers’ possessions look like they’re having a standoff. And here I am, again, standing in the middle, between the two of them.

“Your sons sure have a lot of stuff.” I try to crack the tense mood with a joke. It immediately falls flat between us. Gemma shoots me an uncertain look. Whatever she brought me here for, it is making her anxious.

I swallow hard. “Gemma? Why am I here?”

She slants her head toward the pile of Seph boxes. I follow her footsteps. She grabs a shoebox sitting atop a big cardboard box and holds it away from her body, as if it could bite her.

“I’ve been doing a lot of tidying up recently. Especially in the attic. It was a combination of things. I needed something to take my mind off Dominic and was also inspired by how Seph found my first-date dress in our old attic. I wanted to see what treasures I could find that would lead me to memories of Dominic.”

I wait for her to continue. I’m not sure what she is holding, but since it has Joe’s name on it, I can safely assume it has nothing to do with me. We didn’t exchange anything in Spain. Other than bodily fluids and phone numbers, and those don’t count.

Gemma smiles sadly. “Dominic was always such a sweet child. With a strong moral compass and a lot of compassion toward others. He always treated wounded animals in our backyard and was the first to approach a new kid who moved into our neighborhood. This somewhat changed after he was diagnosed with cancer. He became understandably angry. And then he beat the cancer and went back to being the Dominic we loved and adored. Then he thought he had cancer again, when he was in his early twenties.”

I remember Dom telling me about it. I remember being horrified for him. I remember all of it like it was yesterday.

“Yes?” I ask her quietly, to encourage her to keep talking.

She opens the shoebox—finally—and takes out something that looks like a piece of paper. “Last week, when Seph was in San Francisco to complete his book, I started going through his things, because I was done with Dominic’s side of the attic. I came across this.”

She hands me a small piece of paper. Only it’s not a paper. It’s a photo. The Polaroid photo Joe took of me on the beach in Spain. My mouth drops open. My breath is stuck inside my throat, like a bone. My lips are puffy and my hair is a mess, and I look at the camera—at him—with so much emotion it makes me choke. The love I have for him is raw. The intimacy is palpable. I can feel this photo imprinting itself onto my DNA.