Rain hammered against the motel’s small window. Jessica could hear the faint hiss of evening traffic on York. Her guest’s car would soon be among those vehicles.

God, she was nervous. More nervous than she had ever been while waiting for a date to pick her up. Jessica’s thoughts turned to Tony and the night he’d taken her to the Mexican restaurant. Nervously wiping salty frosting from his lips, just before a whole bunch of lies had come out of them.

She reached down to where she had thrown her bag on the floor, withdrew her wallet, and found the photo of Pamela Arnold behind a couple of crumpled twenty-dollar bills. She smoothed out the corners and stared at the woman and child. Jessica couldn’t even begin to guess how many times she had looked at the photo, wishing she had known her mother properly. The shine from the print was long gone, dulled by Jessica’s fingers tracing the features of the woman’s face, unaware she had been longing for a lie the whole time.

Was her name really Pamela Arnold? Was she dead, like Tony’s story suggested, or was she still alive? Was she sitting around the dinner table right now with her husband and daughter? Did the little girl in the photo carry around a similar picture from that fall day in the park in her own wallet, just as Jessica had done? Did the answers to any of these questions even matter?

Jessica realized they didn’t. The woman was nothing to her. She ripped the time-tattered photo in half, then ripped it again and again. Let the tiny pieces flutter into the trash can under the desk.

She slipped the photo of herself and Tony from behind its plastic compartment. The one she had shown Darla Kennedy in the diner earlier. Their arms were around each other, Jessica laughing, Tony smiling awkwardly as usual, New York stretching out majestically behind them. It had been taken around three and a half years ago. Jessica remembered the moment like it was yesterday.

It had been a beautiful spring day. Warm, without being too hot, a slight breeze cooling the air, but definitely still T-shirt weather. The photo had happened while they were on the observation deck of the Rockefeller Center. A Scottish couple had approached them, brandishing a little point-and-shoot camera, asking if Jessica or Tony would mind taking their photo.

They had joked about Tony being a professional photographer and how the couple had lucked out with a great shot. Then Jessica had asked the couple if they would return the favor and take a quick picture of her and Tony on her iPhone. Later, she had printed off two copies at the local drugstore. One for her own wallet, one for Tony’s.