They looked just like the box of 2007 Polaroids, and they were in order, each labeled with a year from 1974 to 2006. She pulled 1983 off the top of a stack and sat down on the daybed. More photos. More and more photos. Here was a party in someone’s living room, everyone turned toward the camera and smiling—nobody Laurie recognized. A woman sat on a man’s lap, both of them laughing. Someone had paused in the middle of pouring a drink, a martini glass in one hand and a shaker in the other. Where was this house? Who were all these people?
Laurie had been a toddler then. This would have predated even her memories of Dot bringing chocolates at Christmas and ruffling her hair, Dot sleeping on the living room couch at Grandma Natty’s because the rest of the family consisted of couples and kids sharing various rooms upstairs and downstairs.
Beautiful travel pictures, yes—some were taken in postcard places like what seemed to be Hawaii, but also a man standing under a tree pointing to a sign that said BAXTER STATE PARK. In one, two women posed with baskets of wild blueberries. She was fairly certain one of those women had also been in the party picture, sitting on the man’s lap.
There was a picture of what Laurie recognized as much younger versions than she could remember of her mother and father, faded but familiar, seated on Grandma Natty’s rosebud-print sofa, Mom’s head dropped onto Dad’s shoulder. Laurie and her two older brothers must have been running around somewhere, evading the camera and probably eating the Chips Ahoy! that Natty always had in her koala cookie jar.
She looked back at the closet. Thirty-two more boxes. She picked up the phone and texted June. Any chance you want to come over tonight and go through some pictures with me?
Laurie and June usually didn’t say yes or no to each other. They moved along to planning. Gotta get the kids fed and down, but Charlie’s here. How about 7:45?
Laurie texted back a thumbs-up. She sang along with the music for a minute, took a sip of wine, and then picked up her phone again. Then she put it down. Picked it up. Put it facedown. Drank the rest of the glass of wine. Picked it up.
She’d saved his number under “Library Consultant.” Hello! I’m going to make you regret sharing your number with me by asking whether you would like to use your hard-earned organizational skills by coming over tonight and helping me sort through 32 years of Dot’s assorted Polaroids that I just found in a closet. （They are not explicit that I know of.） I can promise snacks and wine. June is also coming. Please check this box if this sounds like the most fun you’ve ever had. Send.
She lay back on the bed, feeling her heart donk-donk-donk in her chest, staring at the round brass light fixture in the ceiling. This was the orange room they had painted together, where Laurie would stay when she came over. When her parents were going out, sometimes they’d leave her brothers at home and let her come and curl up with Dot and eat popcorn and then stay overnight. It would be just the two of them; Dot sometimes called it “girls’ night.”
Her phone pinged, and when she picked it up, she had a text from Nick. Sure, it said. Happy to help. 8:00?
She sent back yet another thumbs-up. And then she texted June. P.S. Nick is coming over also.
June pinged her again almost immediately, in all caps: PLOT TWIST.
* * *
—
They sat on the floor of Dot’s living room, three members of the Calcasset High School Class of 2000, drinking wine out of juice glasses so they wouldn’t tip over on the carpet. They decided to divide up the work roughly by decade: Laurie took the first ten boxes, June took the middle third, and Nick took the last third. The rules they agreed on were that general travel photos could go, pictures with family （most of whom Nick and June could recognize） should stay to be picked over further, and it was perfectly acceptable to keep, as Laurie put it, “anything awesome.” And of course, there was the rule that ruled the other rules: Absolutely anything that had any connection to any kind of duck, wooden or real, had to be saved and pointed out immediately.
They dove in.
“So,” Laurie said as she started flicking through her stack, “do you guys see much of each other anymore besides when I make you do chores?”
June frowned. “Here and there. But when did I last actually talk to you, Nick? The Spring Dance?” He nodded. The Spring Dance was, incongruously, an annual charity baseball game played by the minor-league team Nick’s grandma owned. “We see each other at the store and stuff. But I mostly spend my time around other people who are also chasing their kids all over the place. Nick and I would see each other more if he shared my keen interest in Little League.”