“Home? To the cabin with no plumbing or electricity? To the brain-damaged boy? To an accessory-after-the-fact charge? There’s that new blood test now. Something about DNA. So don’t be ridiculous, Cora.” She reached out, slid her arm around Cora’s shoulder. “Think of all that you’ve found here. Leni is getting an education and becoming a wonderful photographer. You like your job at the art gallery. Your home is always warm and you have a family you can count on.”

What she’d done to her daughter had been forgiven, it was true, and Leni’s forgiveness was as real and true as sunlight. But Cora, try as she had for all of these years, couldn’t forgive herself. It wasn’t the shooting that haunted her; Cora knew she would commit the same crime again in the same circumstances.

She couldn’t forgive herself for the years that came before, for what she allowed and accepted, for the definition of love she’d handed down to her daughter like a dark incantation.

Because of Cora, Leni had learned to be happy with half a life, pretending to be someone else, somewhere else.

Because of Cora, Leni could never see the man she loved or go home again. How was Cora supposed to forgive herself for that?

*   *   *

SMILE.

You’re happy.

Leni didn’t know why she had to remind herself to smile and look happy on this bright day, when they were at the park to celebrate her graduation from college.

She was happy.

Really.

Especially today. She was proud of herself. The first female in her family to graduate from college.

(It had taken a long time.)

Still. She was twenty-five years old, and a single mother, with—as of tomorrow—a college degree in visual arts. She had a loving family, the best kid in the world, and a warm place to live. She was never hungry or freezing or afraid for her mother’s life. Her only fears now were garden-variety parenting fears. Kids crossing the street alone, falling off swing sets, strangers appearing out of nowhere. She never fell asleep to the sound of screaming or crying and never woke to a floor strewn with broken glass.

She was happy.

It didn’t matter that she sometimes had days like today, where the past poked insistently into her view.

Of course she would think of Matthew today, on this day, which was one they’d talked about so often. How many times had a conversation between them begun with: When we finish college…?

Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.

Happy. Smile.

Click, click, click and she was herself again. She could see what mattered.

Unbroken blue sky, not a cloud in sight. People all around.