She brushed her hands dry on her black dress’s skirt and carefully raised the photo. Two smiling faces stared out at her.

What does that mean? Did you miss me as much as I missed you?

The photo’s left side was torn, showing where it had been ripped from some larger image. Margot ran her eyes down the ragged edge. A wisp of black, curling hair, almost too small to see through the faded colors, grazed across her mother’s dress.

Margot frowned and held the photo closer until her eyes threatened to blur.

It really was hair. A lock of it, pulled in from the torn side of the photo by some invisible breeze. Margot was fairly sure she recognized it. She’d fought with that black hair her whole life.

The dark curls had come from her mother’s side. Her grandmother had been gifted with smooth hair and hadn’t known how to deal with them as Margot grew up. She’d been in her late teenage years before she’d figured out the combination of products and microfiber towels that kept them presentable most days, but if she ever skipped her routine, those coarse curls would frizz again, just like in the image she was looking at.

Margot ran her thumb along the ragged edge of the picture.

She’d been in the photo. And they’d torn her out.

The tears that had been absent at the funeral appeared, burning her eyes and stinging her throat. She tried to breathe, but it came in as a choking gasp. Margot pressed her sleeve across her face as she tried to stop the flow.

The photo felt heavy. She brought it back to the fridge and forced shaking fingers to pluck an unused magnet and pin the picture back where it belonged.

As she stepped back, she realized that wasn’t the only photo among the clutter of leaflets and paper scraps. The fridge was covered with them. Some photos showed her parents posed with other men and women, possibly employees or friends. But most often they were just her parents. Many had a ragged side.

She dreaded what she would see, but Margot couldn’t prevent herself from bending closer and examining each image. There—the edge of a sleeve belonging to a young girl’s dress. More traces of flyaway curly hair.

Near knee height, Margot found an image that showed her mother and father from their shoulders up. From what she could tell, this was the oldest photo on the fridge. Her parents looked young; her mother’s hair was long and wild, her father lacking the creases that had grown across his face in his later years.