Best. Picture. Ever. All four of us blank-faced, together beneath the entrance sign of the final stop on our graduation road trip to California, approved by Kira’s mom and dad, Elliot’s mom and dad, Sean’s mom, and mine. My Francine.

Luckily the art director held her finger down and took a burst of, like, twenty-three pictures, so we also have one where we’re all laughing, holding on to each other. Happy.

“That poor kid,” Elliot whispered as the art director strolled away with her baby. “Honey, put your face in the cake….Pretend you’re having fun—no, not like that….”

“She’s an artist,” Kira said. “You should understand her pain. Getting you three to cooperate the rest of the summer will be my grand oeuvre.”

We were her living art project. Every day since graduation, every place we’d been, she was collecting leaves, jars of sand, rocks, pamphlets, pieces of string. These things she carried with her from each place to take home and, with Elliot’s photographs, turn into something beautiful.

Only months before, travel for any reason, let alone for sentimental pleasure or adventure, was a dream I could never have imagined. Losing a penny of my small savings to frivolity was the death knell of my survival alone in the world, but now I could breathe. I could let some money go, work to replace it, maybe even graduate from college. Because I could live in one home. Francine’s and mine. Our home. At least until I turned twenty-one.

Or maybe forever. For now, three years to breathe was a miracle.

Already plans were in place for Yosemite in July, to walk the valleys and climb the mountains my Muir loved and kept safe. Sean was in charge of packing for our partial John Muir Trail saunter. He wanted to walk with me, he said, on the path where he and his mom found a way to keep his dad in them for always, and learned to live without him.

Then Kira would join us at the trail’s end to gather together at Manzanar, where her family’s roots were embedded in the desert, roots that grew into the strength that kept them together and alive, and brought them back to their island home.

Our family stories. And we began, at her and Sean’s insistence, with mine.

“Muir, look,” Kira said. “The collection is begun.” We stood together beside Elliot and scrolled his camera through the cordons of what Kira had christened our San Francisco Muir Trip.

All of us and a random NICU nurse Kira procured, smiling after a tour of the neonatal unit and a lunch of mac and cheese and lime Jell-O in the hospital cafeteria, everyone pointing at me in front of the John Muir Medical Center sign.