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Long enough for Eli to become thirteen, all sharp elbows and sarcasm and football boots left in the wrong rooms. Long enough for Sarah to become, for him, a person made mostly from photographs. That part hurt in ways Jack never quite got used to. Eli remembered pieces. A smell, once. The sound of Sarah singing badly while making pasta.
A vague memory of being carried half-asleep from the car. But mostly, he knew her through what had been preserved — frames on walls, albums in drawers, the box of old company photos Jack had never managed to throw out. His mother existed for him in still images and secondhand stories. Jack tried not to think too hard about what that meant.
