"i flipped through the collection of photos on the table. in half of them, we were kids, posing after a touch football game or making faces at a birthday party. in the other half, we were juniors or seniors in high school, gathering after the homecoming dance or raising drinks at a random get-together. someone had enlarged three pictures and propped them against three vases of lilies. in the first, on the left-hand side of the table, graham stood in a blue champion t-shirt, his hair cut neatly and his brown eyes tired from an afternoon of running. he held tightly a trophy he’d won as the most valuable player in a youth basketball tournament and smiled his modest smile. on the right, he stood at the railing of a caribbean cruise ship, which he’d taken with the shaws as a seventeen-year-old. he wore a blue button-down shirt, his hair, as always, looked freshly cut, and his eyes sagged from a day in the sun. in his hand, he gripped a margarita glass, and he delivered that same coy smile. in the middle picture, his pants were rolled to his knees, and he waded on long beach. his back was to the camera, and his fishing line was thirty yards out in the ocean. in all three he was alone, but this photo stood out. somebody’s mother or father took the first, and his teammates were surely off to the side of the frame. kelly must’ve taken the second, because somewhere i’d seen a picture of her posing on the same railing. obviously, somebody snapped the third shot, but it appeared as though anyone could have. the angle was wide and followed the curvature of the beach, and no one appeared for a quarter-mile in each direction. i imagined him happy there in the ocean, waiting for a fish that, for him, always came. he loved the beach in the summer, and the picture was taken in early August, a few days before he left for new haven. i pictured him releasing the fish where it was free to swim for the remainder of its life, oblivious to the memory of the hook that pierced its lip. and I saw him making the long walk back along the ocean to a parking lot, where reality swept across his face like a sandstorm, some grains stinging more than others."