Looking at Grandma Dot’s face as she walks through that doorway, I want to stroke the side of her wrinkled cheek, smooth the bent collar of her dress, and tuck the stray strand of hair back behind her left ear. Did my mother transmit her tenderness for this complicated, contradictory person in the moment when she snapped the shutter; or did it happen in the darkroom, as she finessed the print’s lines and curves, darks and lights? Then again, maybe those are my own feelings being tapped. For the eleven years between my mother’s death and Grandma Dot’s, my grandmother scrupulously opened and closed doors and windows to keep the room containing Lillian’s three-box legacy and voluminous collection of negatives at the proper temperature. Grandma told me that my mother had left me “some things” I could have when I was ready, but for eleven years I didn’t ask what they were, and she didn’t say. At first I was too full of sadness and anger, guilt and regret to want to know. Next I told myself I was too busy, because that sounded better than admitting I was afraid. Then Grandma died, and it was time to claim the things whether I felt ready or not. I walked up the stairs of the empty house on Fernvale and into my mother’s old room. Seeing those boxes waiting for me was like getting one last message from them both: my mother had left me a way to show her my love, and my grandmother had safeguarded that opportunity, an opportunity I was sure I had squandered.