He looked at the photo of
the two of them when they
were about five, six or seven.

Early in the marriage, they
put the photos in a frame and
hung it on a wall. Now it

stands on a table in their
daughter’s home, her mother
having died twenty-four years

before. He joked about how
much hair he had then, Dutch
and Swedish little, boy blond,

too yet. As the little boy
in the photo, he had secrets
as did she, but his came

bursting out along the years
unlike hers. The little tow-
head in the photo held her

cards close to her chest
and then she died without
showing them. “You will

really never know me,” she
once told him. The only
secret he kept was the

lump in his throat as he
made a joke.