I looked at the photograph again.
“How long?”
“Fifty-one years.”
I ran my fingers over Robert’s face in the picture. I still couldn’t remember his name, our wedding or the life we had shared.
But suddenly tears began running down my cheeks.
Rachel put her arm around me and asked, “Mom, why are you crying?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know who he is,” I whispered. “But my heart feels like it remembers him.”
Rachel cried with me.
She still reads Robert’s notebook to me. Some days the stories feel familiar. Other days they sound like they happened to strangers. But she says one thing never changes.
Whenever she shows me that final photograph, I touch Robert’s face and eventually smile.
Maybe one day I will forget his name completely.
Maybe I will forget our wedding, our first home and even the sound of his voice.
