The Photograph

The photograph arrived in February, folded inside a letter, with a note that said: I know you didn't ask. I thought you might be curious.

She held it for a long time before she looked.

It was a small square snapshot, creased from the envelope. A man stood on the deck of a boat, with a rope in one hand and a hard hat pushed back on his head. He was perhaps thirty, lean and weathered, with the kind of face that looked as if it had spent a long time squinting into the sun. His smile was crooked. His eyes were crinkled at the corners.

He was not handsome. Not exactly. But there was something in the angle of his head, in the easy, tired, hopeful slope of his shoulders, that made her breath catch.