I put the photo I was holding down on the quilt with the others and absentmindedly reached for another from the box.

The moment I touched it my body went cold.

No. This shouldn’t be here.

I had separated all those pictures. Put them away in another box.

I almost tossed the photo away, but the pull to look was too strong. I knew how much it would hurt to see it again, and normally I would have had the strength to turn away, but tonight the desire to see him was stronger than my need to protect myself from the pain.

I leaned back against the headboard of my bed, bringing my knees up close to my chest. I rested the photo against my legs.

Adam.

Chapter 17

My eyes stung as I ran my fingertips over the glossy surface of the photograph.

It was from our first date at Carmichael’s Bridge. It had been his idea. Adam wasn’t your typical teenage boy. Long before he’d decided to become a teacher, he’d been fascinated by nature and science; the marshy swamp around the bridge was his idea of paradise. He loved everything about it. The night song of the frogs. The way the bats danced overhead. He even loved the insects, maybe not the mosquitos, although he loved to talk about how important they were to the ecosystem, but he was pretty passionate about the rest, especially the fireflies. I told him at one point I thought they looked like stars above the water and he asked me if I knew any constellations. It turned out I did. Gideon had been teaching me for years. Andromeda, the chained maiden. Canis Major and Minor, the big and small dog. Sagittarius, the archer. Orion, the hunter. I had gone on and on, pointing them out. In fact, I got so lost in the stars, I didn’t notice Adam had gone silent. When I finally looked back down, I was shocked by the look on his face. No one had ever looked at me that way before. Not like I was magical.

And that was all before he knew who I really was.

I stared at the teenage couple in the photo. They suddenly felt like strangers.

They were so young. They had so much ahead of them.

They had no idea all their happiness would be taken away.

Pain swelled in my chest. The same pain that always hit me when I had a happy memory of Adam. It didn’t matter what it was. It was always replaced with the memory of that day. The day that marked my life into befores and afters. The day that took my heart.

We had planned to meet in the park across from the bookstore. We wanted to walk home together after I was done with my shift, and he finished classes. It was a day like any other. Nothing special about it at all. No clue about what was going to happen.

I remember so clearly walking across the street to the row of trees that led to the park. They were bright green in the afternoon sun, so alive with the first blush of spring. And the air was rich with that fresh, cool scent of earth that comes after the snow melts. I had always thought that was such a hopeful smell, a promise of things to come.