Inside the envelope was a faded photograph, its corners soft from being handled for decades. A young woman in a summer dress laughed beside a young soldier in uniform, his arm around her waist. I knew her smile immediately. It was Rosalind. Then I looked at the soldier, and the ground seemed to tilt beneath my feet.

It was my grandfather. I had his picture on my bookshelf at home, the same crooked grin, the same cowlick he never managed to tame. On the back, in careful handwriting, someone had written: Tom and me, June 1958. Two weeks before he shipped out to Germany. The lawyer watched my face. “The ring she wore at your wedding,” he said quietly, “the one she asked you to take from her nightstand. Your grandfather gave it to her. She waited for him for sixty-eight years.”