The house contained the photographs. The gallery on the living room wall documented both timelines because Carol and David, despite the decision they made and the lie they told, had maintained the gallery as the only complete record of the family as it should have been. They could not raise both children. They could display both children. The displaying was the only form of parenting they could perform for the child who was not there, and the display was the reason the house was closed to visitors whose presence would have required explaining the second row of photographs.
I had never been invited because the house contained the truth Nate had spent three years not telling me.
I asked Nate why he had not told me.
He looked at the dashboard.
He told me he did not tell me because telling me would have required describing the decision his parents made, and describing the decision required him to use the words they sent her away, and the words they sent her away, spoken aloud to his wife, would have made the decision real in a way it had not been real as long as it remained inside his own memory.
