“I have years of experience. They know to listen to me. And what happens if they don’t. Can’t say the same for their mom, though.”

I’m still on the floor, and looking up at her is dizzying. As I touch the hardwood floor, I think it’ll be that soft blue carpeting, my arms reaching to be held. Her soft, soothing voice rubbing lotion on my baby body, a plush towel held out like a muleta. My mother, her voice so sweet, nuzzling my neck, picking out my pajamas, ones with tiny yellow lollipops...

Or was that Anneliese? I bite my lip, shaking myself out of the reverie.

She’s staring down at me, her face placid, that red leather book on her lap waiting to be opened. So I sit up, wiping my pants of nonexistent dust and settle back down on the couch.

It’s an album, an old-fashioned album, not a book at all. “I have pictures with all the kids I’ve worked with—ones I nannied, ones I babysat, even the ones I tutored.” She raps her nails against the leather. “I have other pictures, of course. But that’s a big part of it. I like to remember, you know? Even if I never see them again, at least I have evidence that I made a difference.”

She opens it and the binding doesn’t even crack, as if it has been flipped through recently. And there I am, the first set of photos in the album. Again and again and again. On the back porch upstate, swaddled in winter clothes, the ground white with snow. In a chair surrounded by dolls, Beanie Babies, a live tabby cat on my lap. Swimming in the lake. In a classroom stacking blocks. Mid-cry at the ice cream parlor.

We are pressed together in one picture, she and I. But we aren’t staring at the camera. We’re looking at each other, our eyelids almost touching. And the joy I see in our faces, in the profile of our smiles, is so palpable, so mesmerizing that I almost choke on it. I want to yank it out of the captured moment, like Lola, make it mine and mine forever. Cherish that connective love in my pocket and carry it always.

I put a hand to my mouth because that face, that face, how could I have forgotten her face for all these years, beaming down at me, slipping me peanut M&M’s, buttoning my coat, putting soap in the bath until it was nothing but frothing bubbles, running her fingers through my thin, scraggly tufts of hair.

“I took a lot of pictures of you,” I hear her say. “You were my first. My favorite.”

“Really?” I ask. And I am a child again, desperate for praise.

“Of course. You were perfect.” She touches me then, puts her sinewy arm around me, squeezing me closer, and I lean into it.