Framed pictures line the hallway, and I let my eyes travel over them, looking for an empty frame where this one might belong. There’s a picture with me and Dad by the water, a glistening salmon swinging on a fishing rod between us. Another of me as a toddler—a little monkey clinging to his back during a hike, blonde curls flat against a chubby face. A grainy photo of me standing in the mouth of the Whittier tunnel. Dad took that one the first time he drove me to college. He stopped just before we entered and ordered me out, said he needed photographic evidence that my days of traveling the tunnel were numbered.

My phone buzzes and a reminder pops up on the screen. Relax and read your favorite book, make coffee. I click my tongue and smile. I must have been making coffee; then maybe I got this photo out because I was thinking about him. It’s enough of a guess to make me feel grounded, and now I know my next move: go to the kitchen and see if I made the coffee or was in the middle of it.

When I enter the kitchen, I freeze.

A young girl, maybe nine or ten, kneels on the yellow laminate squares, small hands collecting hunks of glass. She looks up when I enter, studies me from behind glasses with frames that are too big for her small round face. Glasses that don’t look like the prescription kind. And her hair. It’s piled up on top of her head and appears to have been wound around the cardboard of a toilet paper roll. I can tell because half of the roll is sticking through her hair.

A bubble of laughter fights to escape my mouth. I stop myself. Kids don’t like to be laughed at by adults.

“Hi!” I say because I can’t think of how else to start this conversation. It’s embarrassing to have forgotten why she’s here, but something about her puts me at ease. Maybe it’s just because I’ve always been comfortable around kids. “Is everything okay?”

She narrows her eyes, pinches her lips together. “Aw, hell, did you forget about me already?”

I shrug. “Did you forget that kids your age shouldn’t use language like that?”

She ducks her head, smiles. “You sound just like Ms. Kiko.” Still smiling, she lifts one hand. Blood trickles down from her pinkie in a dotted line. “You were getting me a Band-Aid, and I think you forgot. And also, maybe you forgot that I broke one of your glasses on accident. So I’m sorry, even though I already said that, but you probably forgot that too. And I guess you definitely forgot that you walked me home from the Buckner ’cause you said there were bears who would eat me.”