Left hand sliding up the banister and right hand brushing bits of Congo Square crumbs from her lips, Charlotte slumped back upstairs to the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror stared dully back at her as she guided the toothbrush over her teeth in careful arcs. This is what a bastard looks like. Baaaastaaaard, baaaastaaaard. She poked the bristles between her teeth in an effort to dislodge the walnut pieces. That’s really what you are, but you should stop feeling sorry for yourself, bastard. She said the word “bastard” repeatedly in her head as she rinsed the paste from her teeth, and the more she thought about it, the less meaning it had.

She wandered into her parents’ room and stared at the bed, with its white chenille bedspread pulled perfectly taut over the surface, like the smile her mother had been showing everyone since December. That frightening, tight, angry smile in Revlon Fire & Ice.

Charlotte picked up a tube of lipstick from the dresser and circled it around her lips. It was a bright pink that her mother never wore anymore. Pink Champagne was what the faded label said. She went and opened the closet and lightly skipped her fingers over the dresses and shirts on hangers, releasing the smell of her mother’s perfume, which hung with the clothing. Lily of the valley. She dropped to her knees and reached for the boxes behind the three pairs of carefully lined-up shoes. The boxes were full of photographs of their family. Charlotte in the backyard, dressed in her Easter bonnet and flouncy dress, smiling. Charlotte and Mother next to the towering sunflowers in the garden. Mother and Dad on the dock at Little Sodus Bay in their bathing suits, smiling. Mother and Dad standing next to his old Model A Ford, smiling. Smiling, smiling, smiling. Appearances had always been most important to Vivian Dalton. Charlotte had been surprised her mother let her stay home today. She only did that when Charlotte was actually sick. She didn’t want people wondering what was wrong with her daughter if she was absent from school too often or for too many days in a row. Appearances were everything to her. How people perceived her family. Her family.

Charlotte popped off the lid of a hatbox that sat on the floor of the closet, and there, instead of a hat, sat a half-used pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a little brown notebook. She crossed her legs, slid one of the cigarettes from the pack, and held it between her lips. It did not taste good, but she liked the way it felt. She tucked another cigarette behind her ear, then reached for the little brown notebook and opened to the first page. It was blank. She flipped to the second page, which was also blank. As was the next page, and the next page. She leaned forward and flipped faster until she reached a marked page. The first fifty pages of the little notebook had been left blank, and then when her mother started writing, on page fifty-one, it appeared to be notes on the family background. Hard facts. Birth, marriage, and death dates for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. Some were people Charlotte had never heard of. Charlotte skimmed through the information and turned the pages until she found this: