Mary thumbed through the photos. They were of her mother and father at various events. A couple shots from some barbecue, a few from school events of Mary’s. Mary was in early high school in these photos, her swim team sweats in one photo, a homecoming dress in another photo. Then there were two of her mother on her own, candids. Her slicing carrots for a salad in one of them and her in the driver’s seat in the other. In neither photo was she aware she was being photographed.

“Tiff took these ones too.” Mary knew instinctually.

“Tiff took pretty much every photo in this box.” She sniffed again. “She just loved taking bad pictures of me.”

Mary squinted up at her mother in surprise. “You think these photos are bad?”

To Mary’s eye, her mother looked relaxed and natural in the candids, as lovely as always. In the posed ones at the school events, her mother looked just how she’d remembered her looking from that time period. Nothing bad about it.

“You don’t see the crow’s-feet and the turkey wattle?” Naomi asked caustically, pointing at the virtually nonexistent flaws in each photo. “My hair was starting to change texture, and I had no idea how to style it yet. Hence that hairstyle. I’d started to gain weight too. Hadn’t yet joined Weight Watchers.”

“Mom...” Mary trailed off, shocked at her mother’s harsh appraisal of herself, at the realization that her mother kept a box of ugly photos tucked away in the attic.

“I wanted you to see these, Mary. Do you have any idea how old I am in these photos?”

Mary’s stomach dropped out, through her feet, through to the second floor of the house, and kept on going down to the kitchen and straight into the basement.

“I see you’ve upped the ante and decided to start harassing me with visual aids.” Mary was proud of herself for keeping any of her anger and outrage and pain out of her voice.

“I’m not harassing you, Mary. I’m trying to show you something. I wasn’t that much older than you in these pictures.”

These pictures, where, in Mary’s eyes, her mother looked utterly lovely. Yes, she looked forty years old. But she was forty years old. Where the hell was the crime in that?

Her mother stood suddenly, grabbing Mary’s hand and practically dragging her down the attic stairs. They wound up in the hallway with the pageant photos. Naomi pointed with a manicured, shaking finger at the beautiful twenty-year-old girl there. “You know the story, Mary. You know how your father and I met.”