I frowned, and instead of saying something, I got up on my knees and reached over to Pop’s coffee table, where his photo albums were stacked. He has a ton of them in a big wooden chest in his apartment, but the chest was too big for this room at the RRC, so he just took his two favorites with him: thick ones full of the last thirty years.

“You know it’s true, Fred—” Pop started to say, but before he could get another word in, I’d flipped open one of the albums.

“Where was this taken?” I pointed to a photo of him and Nan that I really liked. It was in black-and-white, but you could still tell that the heels she was wearing were leopard print, and I thought she looked wicked cool in them.

Pop looked over my shoulder, squinting to see. “Queenscliff, for our anniversary one year,” he said, and then he smiled.

I held up a photo of Mom next, from her high school days—her blonde hair was flicked out around her head, and she was wearing a school uniform with a short blue skirt and neatly tucked white shirt. The photo had this glow of the olden days.

“What was she like in high school?” I asked, pleased that Pop wasn’t talking about Luca, Anika, or the baby anymore.

“She went on a tear—skipping school and going into the city every chance she could, hanging out with boys with bad haircuts.” Pop sighed. “We lost Winifred the year before and it hit her hard.”

Nan died of cancer when my mom was a teenager. When I was really little, I could never understand how Mom grew up without her mom around. I couldn’t imagine how that could be—and then it happened to me.

“There was a lot I probably missed, but . . .” He shook his head a little. “You’re lucky you’ll have Anika around, to talk with about growing up and getting older. And things you maybe don’t want to talk to your dad or me about . . .”

I rolled my eyes and reached for the second of Pop’s albums. It was my favorite one, from Mom and Luca’s wedding. The cover was this baby-blue leather with the words “Wedding Memories” in curly white writing. I opened the book up and there were the three of us—Mom, Luca, and me as a toddler—stuck down on the page, behind a sheet of clear plastic.