Angie looked at this photo every day and she was always struck by it for some reasons she could name, and others that were still unclear. The man’s posture had caught her attention first. He had put his hands on the shoulders of the women before him, his right hand on the younger woman’s right shoulder, his left on the older woman’s left, and he was leaning forward slightly with his upper body, as if he wanted to draw them both closer. The younger woman had begun to turn her head toward him. She had a beautiful profile, her jaw strong and clean and the line of her cheek a perfect curve, but what caught Angie’s imagination was her hand, which she had lifted as if she meant to touch her own right shoulder, where the man’s hand rested. The camera had caught that motion and turned her hand into something alive, trembling and full of life just over her heart. Angie followed the arc of the moving hand as she had every time she picked up this photo, but this time a flash of recognition came to her.

Rob had already reached back into the photo box to bring out the one he had found of Miss Zula and her mother. When he put it down on the desk, it was clear to see that the two photos had been taken on the same day on the same porch, maybe only moments apart. The flash had malfunctioned on one but not the other, so that Miss Zula and her mother were overexposed while the other people—and who were they?—were in focus.

“Look,” Rob said, “you can see a little of Miss Zula’s shoulder here.”

His finger hovered over the edge of the first photo and traveled to the one next to it. “Like a bridge,” Rob said, putting exactly the right image in Angie’s mind. They stood for a moment trying to understand the story the two photos made when they were put together.

“That’s got to be Abe Bragg,” Rob said finally. “I’ve never seen of photo of him out of uniform before, and the hat put me off at first.”

Of course, Angie thought. Another missed connection, but like Rob, she had seen very few photographs of Miss Zula’s older brother. There was one of him in the parlor at Magnolia House, but in his Air Force dress uniform.

“I don’t know who the two women are,” said Rob. “Did you ask Miss Maddie? She might be the one who took the photos, as she isn’t in them.”

“I’ll have to remember to show them to her next time I’m over there.” Something she would do as soon as possible, but Angie didn’t want to say so, for reasons too complicated to consider.

“Why not ask Miss Zula directly?”