Right Beside You

Fifteen

FIFTEEN

T he dim light from the hallway barely illuminates Cookie’s chipped fingernail as she draws it slowly across the photograph in her lap—across the pavement, across the bookshop window, across the impossibly young woman in the pink-and-purple dress, standing in the doorway on that morning she’s never forgotten. Just look at her smile, her broad, carefree smile, bathed in the soft light of dawn.

“There she is,” Cookie whispers as she marvels at the memory. “There she is.”