Curious about where it was taken, I slip it out of its frame. I had taken the whole thing so it wouldn’t bend in my bag. I set the frame aside and turn the photo over to read Portland, Oregon. I remember that trip. Mom had wanted to visit the town she’d been born in even though no relatives remained there. Under Portland is the date it was taken, but then, beneath that and written in black Sharpie, is a website link along with what looks like a password. It’s Dad’s writing but not his usual elegant style. These are block letters. Angry-looking block letters.

I switch my phone on, and when it finds a signal, I hit the Safari icon and enter the address, noticing how my heartbeat has sped up and hearing that warning in my head that I shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t look. I sit up as the website loads to show a black background with a box opening up at the center, the cursor resting there. It’s all very ominous. Taking the code from the back of the photo, a random string of letters and numbers, I type it in, and a part of me wishes it won’t work. Wishes I’ll get an error message or something. But then the screen changes, and from the black background, a bright, happy, almost maniacally so, smiley face appears, starting out small, then growing large enough to fill the entire screen. It hovers there and makes me shudder.

And then I see the first image.

For a moment, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Or maybe I don’t want to know what it is. But I click through, as if on autopilot, to scroll to the next one. And the next one. And the ones after that. My hand goes to my mouth as my brain processes what I’m seeing.

My mother.

My mother with a man who is not my father.

The photos begin to blur as my eyes fill with tears, and masochist that I am, I keep clicking only to see more and more photos of them together. My mother and her lover. A man whose face I never see. A man who is very clearly not my father, not with his build, not with those tattoos.

Dad’s letter to me comes to mind. The betrayal he’d felt. My conversation with Bastian and Amadeo telling me Emma isn’t my father’s daughter repeats itself, their voices so clear. I see the evidence they had. And then I hear what Lucien said. How Dad wasn’t surprised about the accident that killed her. That almost killed my sister. My sister who won’t speak and is terrified of men.