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Biddy shrugs. “A flat dinosaur.”

“That’s a fossil.”

Biddy nods. “It’s definitely a fossil.”

The blue handwriting reminds me of the first package, even if I can’t prove the same person wrote both. The cardboard feels rigid enough to protect whatever’s inside, and white tape seals the flap shut.

I run my thumb along the edge.

“Dad!”

“I’m getting there.”

I take a knife from the block, slice through the tape, and fold back the flap. Tissue paper covers a cream-colored card and an old photograph sealed inside a protective sleeve.

The picture catches my eye before I can reach the card.

Celeste.

My chest tightens as I lift the photograph free.

She looks younger than memory allows, her hair gathered loosely at the nape of her neck as she stands outside a brick building beside four women I don’t recognize. One wraps an arm around her shoulders. Another balances a little boy against her hip.

Their smiles stop me.

I’ve seen that look before on families walking out of secure rooms after the danger passed, on clients stepping into lives they thought they’d never get back, on people discovering they could stop looking over their shoulders.

I never expect to see Celeste smiling back at me from inside an anonymous envelope.

She hated having her picture taken. Every time I reached for my phone she’d duck behind whoever stood closest, laugh that the people she worked with deserved privacy more than she deserved another photograph, and leave me with another blurry shot of her shoulder disappearing out of frame.

Most of the photographs we have exist because somebody else insisted she stay still long enough to be included.

Now she’s standing outside a brick building with four women I don’t recognize, laughing at whatever one of them has just said as though the whole world has narrowed to that conversation.

“Daddy?”

I look up to find Babs stretched halfway across the kitchen island, with Biddy studying the picture beside her.

“Who is everybody?” Babs asks.

“I wish I knew.”

She wrinkles her forehead. “But you knew Mommy.”

“I did.”

“Then how come you don’t know her friends?”

I look back at the photograph before answering. “Your mom spent years helping people. She met hundreds along the way, and she didn’t always bring her work home.”

Biddy taps one finger against the brick building in the background. “Did Mommy come here a lot?”

“She did.”

“Did she help all these people?”

I look at Celeste’s smile before I answer. “She helped as many people as she could.”