On the days throughout adulthood, when I’d come home, stock his fridge, I’d sneak into his closet and find the tan leather hard-side suitcase he’s always kept at the very back, behind his running shoes. I’d unlatch the brass locks and try to sniff my mother’s scent, long gone, in the lingerie, tiny satin slips that would barely cover my torso, a pair of leopard panties with a brown stain in the crotch area. It was obscene and precious, grotesque but twee, that he kept them around, these remnants of sex with his long-dead wife.

I knew that in one ruched pocket of the suitcase, he stashed Polaroids of her, her legs and mouth agape, two back holes made fuzzy by overexposure. In one, I recognized myself in her breasts, the pink of her areolas, the way her left one sagged just the tiniest bit to the right.

When I cleaned out the apartment, I burned the pictures, holding them with old steel tongs, lighting them unceremoniously with the kitchen stove’s front burner turned up high.

Now, in my tiny apartment, I grab my laptop, clicking it awake. On-screen there are dozens of tabs open for work but I close out quickly, starting fresh with a new page. I Google Anneliese, maybe because I want to see that face again before I fall asleep, like re-reading a good-night text from a lover.

I don’t have social media anymore and she said she didn’t either, so it’s hard to find her, but when I do it’s on a nannying site called NannyBook. Her reviews are glowing, five stars from every parent, claiming that Anneliese knew every single aspect of childcare, from the right soap to use at what age to how to diffuse a temper tantrum within seconds. In the thumbnail picture, her hair seeps down her shoulders in shiny layers. She wears a royal-blue blouse and she has her glasses perched at the edge of her nose. She is looking straight at the camera, her body tilted forward, beckoning you to ask more, to contact her at the link on the bottom of the page.

I wonder why she never had her own children. What makes a woman who has dedicated her life to caring for other people’s kids decide to remain childless? Was it an attempt to separate work and personal life, or was she so emotionally taxed when she went to sleep every night that the toll of taking care of her own would have seemed too draining?