What he set down was not what I’d anticipated.
It was a small square of faded paper, its edges soft from decades of handling. He slid it across the linen toward me.
I looked down.
Every drop of blood drained from my face.
I’d seen that photograph before, but I hadn’t laid eyes on it in three decades.
My voice barely came out.
“How…” I whispered. “How do you have this?”
A blue satin dress. A boy in a rented tuxedo. A gymnasium banner blurred behind us.
My prom photo.
“That’s me,” he said, tapping the boy in the tuxedo. “I’m Peter.”
The room narrowed to a pinpoint.
Peter. My high school sweetheart. The boy who’d vanished the morning after that very night, leaving me baffled for weeks, then months, wondering what I’d done wrong.
“I didn’t do it to destroy your marriage,” he said quietly. “I did it because you deserve better than what he was giving you. You always did.”
