Camila studied his face a moment before setting a tray on the coffee table. She poured black coffee into a tiny teacup. “See the world, you know? I got pregnant instead. I was nineteen. I didn’t know how to say ‘I don’t want this life,’” she continued, pointing at the wedding photo on the wall without looking at it. “Moved from California because his family lived here.” Camila studied Larkin a second time. “I don’t speak ill of the dead, Detective, because I believe in Jesus. But I think even the Blessed Mother breathed a sigh of relief when Oscar choked to death on a bucket of KFC, December 12, 1985.”

Larkin returned the album to the shelf without a word, moved around the table, and took a seat on the couch.

Camila poured milk into Larkin’s coffee until the ratio was in favor of dairy, then made herself a cup and sat in the recliner. “We’d tried for more children, but Marco was my miracle. He was six when his papá passed. I could have gone home. My whole family still lived in California. But we’d managed to carve out a life here and… I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to prove something.”

Larkin took a polite sip of the milky coffee. His fingers were too big to properly hold the cup by its handle.

Camila studied her own drink. She spoke without glancing up. “I took so many pictures because I wanted to be a photographer…. I never thought they’d one day become my only connection to Marco.” She raised her head. “It’s getting more difficult to remember his voice. Sometimes, I wake in the middle of the night, sweating and crying. I come in here, in the dark, and go through the albums by the glow of city lights, and it’s almost like I can hear an echo of that exact moment when the shutter clicked. And then Marco is still alive.”

“Echoic memory,” Larkin said.

“What’s that?”

“Sensory memory,” he answered. “Specifically, how we remember what we hear. It’s very brief. Only a few seconds. Afterward, it moves into our short-term memory, where our brain can interpret sounds, such as syllables, into words and meanings and we can converse. It takes a considerable amount of impactful associations for that sort of memory to become housed in the long-term. Which is why their voice fades away and maybe you can only recall it when focusing on a specific moment, like studying a photograph. A majority of people experience sensory memory loss of a loved one. It’s not you—it’s biology.”

Camila leaned forward, set her cup on the coffee table, and stared at her hands, which she clasped in her lap. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“I know.”