“I can’t stay long, though.” Something Lila said to her mother on most of her visits. “I was hoping—”

“Are you sure you don’t want a lemon bar?” she said. “I have more than I can eat.”

“I’m sure, but I was hoping to take a look—”

“You can take some home for Joe. He loves my lemon bars. I think he ate a whole plate full at Christmas?”

“Remember that metal box I used to keep in my sock drawer, the one with my high school stuff in it?”

A tinge of worry materialized in the lines around Charlotte’s eyes. “What do you want with that?”

“I need to look at something. I know you took it out of my room.”

“I haven’t seen you in months.”

“It’s important, Mom.”

“What could be important about a bunch of old pictures?”

“I’m trying to figure some stuff out.”

“Stuff?”

“I want to look at those pictures.”

“Oh, honey, are you sure that’s wise? I mean…” Charlotte didn’t finish her thought; she didn’t need to. Lila knew what followed. I mean, won’t that make you gloomy again? Won’t that take you back to those days when you tried to kill yourself?

“Can you please tell me where it is?”

Charlotte knotted her hands together. “I put it in my bedroom…for safekeeping.”

Lila headed toward the steps. “Where?”

“The closet, but…shouldn’t you let sleeping dogs lie?”

Lila paused to look at Charlotte. She pictured her mother writing the letter to Dr. Roberts, and forging Lila’s signature. The image summoned an army of harsh words and made her cheeks get hot, but Lila held her tongue. She shook her head, and walked upstairs in silence.

Lila found her box in the closet, shoved beneath a winter quilt. She pulled it free and took it to her old bedroom. The key to the box was where she’d left it, taped behind the back side of her sock drawer.

Among the relics, Lila had kept four decks of wallet-size photos bound together by rubber bands, one stack for each year of high school. She pulled the band off her senior photos and started flipping through the faces, searching for a memory that might not even exist. She turned each picture over to read the inscriptions on the back, their sentiments starting with phrases like Hey wild thing, or To my favorite party girl, or Remember that crazy night we…

About halfway through the deck, Lila had to pause. She had never noticed it before, but not one of her classmates offered a sentiment that ran deeper than the swill in the bottom of a shot glass.

She returned to her task, her mood much heavier than before, and when she came to Sean Daniels’s picture, she read his inscription: Every dog has its day. Quirky was how she’d described Sean to Detective Vang, but this seemed to blow past quirky and land in the area of full-blown creepy. Lila put his photo into her pocket to show Niki.