Elias crouched beside him.
“To you too.”
His son looked at his face for a long moment.
Then he leaned forward and hugged him.
No photograph needed to be offered.
No memory needed to be surrendered.
There was nothing Arthur had to remove before he was allowed to belong.
At bedtime, they chose a book Nora once read badly because she insisted every animal should have the same ridiculous voice.
Elias attempted it.
Arthur objected immediately.
“The fox is wrong.”
“I thought they were all wrong.”
“Not that wrong.”
They tried again.
Halfway through, Arthur began reading the dialogue himself.
Elias listened.
When the story ended, the boy placed the book on his bedside table.
The lake photograph was downstairs now.
His bedroom shelf held a model bridge, a stone with a white stripe, and a picture of him and his father with sunburned noses.
It did not look like a shrine.
It looked like the room of a child who had a past and expected a future.
Elias turned on the small lamp.
“Door open?”
“A little.”
He adjusted it.
“This much?”
“A bit more.”
He moved it again.
Arthur nodded.
As Elias reached the hallway, his son called him back.
For a moment, he remembered the frightened question at dinner.
Will you put my picture away too?
But Arthur was smiling now.
“Tomorrow, can we make pancakes?”
“Yes.”
“The ones Mum made?”
Elias smiled.
“With too much cinnamon?”
“There isn’t too much.”
“I remember.”
Arthur settled beneath the blanket.
His father remained at the doorway for another moment.
Downstairs, Nora’s photograph stood face-up near the garden.
On his desk, Arthur’s school picture stood beside the first photograph of Elias holding him.
Neither had to be hidden to make room for the other.
And upstairs, the boy who once counted the photographs to measure how close he was to being forgotten had already begun thinking about breakfast.
