I liked taking my time analyzing each photo, trying to find the oldest, as well as attempting to figure out the one from which the rest seemed to ripple out of. In all these years, I could never seem to do it. Something would always stop me, be it a particular picture that would take me back in a way I didn’t expect or a feeling I’d be unable to control and would cause me to lose focus. Then, I spotted it. An old, small square that showed me and Liam dressed as race car drivers. I must’ve been three, which made him six or seven years old, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember that day.

I thought about all the memories he’d had that I’d been a part of, but he never got to retain. For years, Liam was the one who had all those moments stored in his head. He actually liked sharing them, particularly whenever he was high. He’d tell me about the relatives I never knew, such as Grandpa Dave and Aunt Flora, and the places I didn’t recall visiting, like the time Dad took us with him on a business trip to Chicago so we could fly on a plane for the first time. He told me how he hated me for the first two years of my life, but that he only “actually” hated me until I was almost one, when I said his name—my first word. It was an odd feeling, having some of your own memories known only to others. Odder still was the fact that the keeper of mine was now gone, having taken them with him when he died. Yet I found myself making a new memory which involved him at that very moment, even though he would never know, so I guess we’d switched. I was now the keeper of some of his memories.

For what felt like hours, I canvassed that wall, gladly jumping into every picture and revisiting each moment it depicted. Until, eventually, I was discovered.

“Babe?”

I turned and found Ethan standing by the door, wearing nothing but black boxer briefs and looking as though he was waiting for permission to enter. I smiled, which he understood as just that, and walked over.

“What’s this?” he asked, rubbing his eyes and looking curiously at Liam’s wall.

“His life,” I told him quietly.

He sat down beside me and looked at the pictures for the longest time before speaking. “He looked happy. And he must’ve really cared about you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There’s hardly a picture here you’re not in.”

“I hadn’t…I never noticed that,” I said, and we both went silent for another beat.