The Photograph

A Mystery in Black and White

Photo by Nano Banana 2

You always held onto things too easily, little mementos from events in your life you didn’t want to forget— theater tickets from our first date, rocks picked up from hikes we took together along the Appalachian Trail, a cracker wrapper from that time we ate at Ken’s Steakhouse in Massachusetts just because you hadn’t known the dressing sold in grocery stores was from a real place. All of these treasures, and many more, you kept in cardboard boxes and shoe boxes in your closet.

I couldn’t get myself to do anything with them after you disappeared.

I thought you’d come back. But you didn’t.

We did the whole routine — the missing persons report, the police, media appeals, community searches — all of it. We even hire a detective to find you after our friends did a Go Fund Me.

Everything came up blank.

I held onto them because they were all I had of you. They served as my memory. They kept from fading.

You are an unanswered question, an unfinished story — you had so many of those.

Now it’s official. You are my deceased husband. Not because they found your body, but because they gave up. We gave up.