But right now, I need to see them.
I open a folder I haven’t touched in years. Inside is another world. Another lifetime. Spanning across four years, these are the still, crystallized moments of my time at the University.
I scan through them slowly, watching myself travel from the months after graduation through moving into the house my father chose so I could be close to campus. It’s strange to see the images of that house now. I lived there for more than a decade, but it looks almost unrecognizable in the earliest pictures. Empty and painted in a variety of awful colors I’m glad we changed immediately, it’s a far cry from the home we created.
A few pages of pictures later, I find the first one of Julia. She’s laughing, her head tilted back so the sunlight streams through her hair. A bright blue sky filled with soft clouds reflects on dark sunglasses. She’s wearing the vibrant shade of lipstick she always put on the mornings of test days. She always said the color gave her more confidence and helped her do better on her tests.
That must have been during the second week of class, when our English teacher gave us what she referred to as “just a little assessment to get our feet wet,” and which turned out to be an exhaustive test on material she stuffed into three classes that almost everyone failed.
That’s probably why she’s laughing. It was just so epically bad.
I smile and keep scanning through. Some of the pictures have captions, but most don’t. They’re just there. Captured in that exact moment so I can look back on it. I don’t need to know exactly what was going on or have the insight of who I was right then telling me what to think of the picture.
What matters is it happened. She was there.
After a while, I set the computer aside and start working through my list of what needs to get done today to get ready for the holiday. There’s still cleaning and decorating to do, and I need to get that jumpstart on the food.
A few hours later, the house is filling with the smell of sweet potatoes steeped in brown sugar and I’ve managed to find all the dishes and flatware for the meal. We’re just going to have to not eat at the dining room table at all until Thursday. It’s officially in Thanksgiving mode and won’t be touched until the big day.
Needing a break, I grab a plastic container of chopped vegetables I keep stashed in the refrigerator and go back into the living room. My intention is to watch a few of the Thanksgiving cooking shows Bellamy and I always loved to watch and that play on repeat throughout the season. But I’m drawn back to my computer.
I’m still scrolling through the pictures when Sam gets home. As usual, he goes straight for the refrigerator. This time he chooses cider and warms it up before coming to sit beside me.
“What are you looking at?” he asks.
“Pictures from when I was in college,” I tell him. “I haven’t looked at them in forever.”
He leans closer so he can look at the screen. “I haven’t seen any of these. You look so young.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s funny, I don’t really think of myself as that much different. Not that I still think I look that young or anything. Just that when I look in the mirror, I don’t notice the changes. I guess that’s the same for everybody. I just don’t remember looking like that, or when things started to change. But when I look at these pictures, I think about every single year that’s passed since then.”
He points at the screen. “Is that Julia?”
I nod. “Yeah. We went to a little pocket park in one of the neighborhoods to have a picnic. She invited one of her friends and he said he was going to bring his dog along, so Julia stopped on the way to the park and got a package of these really expensive dog cookies that were made with human grade ingredients and look like they came from a bakery.”
“Did she have something for that guy?” Sam asks.
“I don’t think so. At least, she didn’t say anything about it. She was more wrapped up in the dog. She gave him one of the cookies and then was talking about them and we all decided since they were human grade, we should taste them. I can still remember sitting there on that picnic blanket with this elaborate spread of food around us, nibbling on dog cookies,” I say.
He laughs. “Were they good?”
“I mean, they tasted like cookies,” I chuckle. “Maybe not as sweet, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think it might have offended Julia a little that her friend ate the whole thing.”
“Why?”
“Because she made all the food,” I tell him, laughing. “This is right around when she was toying with changing up her studies and doing culinary. She never really talked about any other potential career with the same enthusiasm and excitement that she did about cooking. But it was funny, she talked about it as if it was some sort of secret. As if she should be ashamed that she wanted to do it.”
“Maybe her family was pressuring her to do something else,” Sam says.
I nod. “Maybe.”
“What is it?” he asks a few seconds later. “You look as if something’s really bothering you. Is it still just that she left school without telling you?”
“I don’t think that’s what happened, Sam,” I say.
“You don’t?”
I shake my head, sitting back and turning so I can look at him. He pulls my feet across his lap and starts to rub one of them through my thick socks.
“It doesn’t make sense. She never seemed miserable. She talked about graduating. And we were close. If she
