The small things kept adding up, though none alone seemed worth mentioning. Mark’s house had almost no photos of Chloe — a few baby pictures of Tim, a handful of vacation shots, but nothing of her alone, nothing recent. When Julia asked once, gently, Mark’s jaw tightened.”It’s still hard,” he said. “I put most of it away after she died. Easier that way.”
Julia understood grief worked differently for everyone, so she let it go. When she asked what Chloe had been like, Mark gave short answers — kind, funny, loved gardening — the kind of description that could fit anyone. Once she pushed a little further, and Mark pulled out his phone, scrolled, and showed her a photo. “That’s her,” he said. A woman with dark hair, laughing at something off-camera.
Julia looked at it a second too long before Mark put the phone away, almost quickly. She didn’t think anything of it at the time; grief made people strange about memories, especially of those you loved deeply, she told herself. Tim, watching from the kitchen doorway, had gone very still. Julia noticed but didn’t understand why.