And then the next thing happens, which I think is supposed to be the last thing.

I’m sitting in the living room, staring out the window when Mom comes in with a thick, padded envelope. She hands it to me. I look at her, confused.

“Package for you,” she says. “I signed for it.”

I stare at it for a minute, and then I notice the name on the return address.

Culler Evans

Mom notices it too.

“Oh…” she says, surprised. “Culler Evans … Culler Evans. Your father was teaching him. He thought he was just brilliant. He sent a very nice card after the funeral. Did you know him, Eddie?”

I look at her and she’s looking at me funny.

“I met him once,” I say.

She nods. I take the envelope upstairs to my bedroom. It’s heavy, a little. I sit on the bed with it forever, picking at the corner, before I finally gather the courage to open it.

It’s hard to get my hands to work.

Photographs spill out onto the bed. So many photographs. A memory card. I’m not sure what to think as I sort through them. I’m looking for a note. I’m always and forever looking for a note, but there’s none. Just photographs. Culler’s photographs. Only his photographs.

I go through them slowly, my fingers trembling, and watch my life play out in stills.

First, Tarver’s. Culler’s empty interpretation of the outside of it. Photograph after photograph of this place, and I remember what he said. Just knowing it inspired him; that he came here to be inspired … I’m hoping to feed off that. And then, suddenly I’m there. This girl, peering into his station wagon. These photographs turn into my discovery of the initials on the door. I know this story; I lived it. The photographs he took of the studio after we cleared it out. The one snap he managed to get with me in it. These turn into the point-and-shoots he showed me at Chester’s and those photographs turn into the schoolhouse. In one photo, I’m talking to Milo and I remember what we were talking about. Fighting.

We discover the second message.

The photograph of my hands after Milo left.

Then the photograph of the gazebo at night. The photographs of me on that street in Labelle. The house. Burdens. Burdens.

Nothing worth staying for.

The photographs in the motel. These give me pause. I stare at the girl in them and I don’t believe I am her. Soft and naked. Porcelain skin, standing in front of Culler. The TV is a bright white light behind me and I’m looking at him in a way I am not sure I’ve ever looked at anyone before. My grief is on me. I can see it plainly in my eyes and that makes my throat tight and my stomach hurt. I remember how I felt that exact moment, knowing how alive and young I was—am—and I see it here, so much. It’s like there’s something there in me, just waiting to be realized.

And now it’s gone. I think it must be gone.

I feel a deep sense of loss. More now, maybe, than before. I run my fingers over the pictures of myself slowly. I was so close. I thought I was so close. And now I am farther from where I started and everything is far from me because I still need an answer and I think of Culler and how far we are from each other, how brief and intense we were, and then over. It’s amazing, when you think about it. And sad. Just like that. Like that—intense, everything, over.

Like being alive one moment and dead the next.