Chapter 4

"Do we need to keep these words?" Evelyn asked.

"Of course," Grace said, leaning in for a closer look. "My mother wrote them. Her handwriting was beautiful."

Evelyn nodded and scribbled in her notebook, "Keep the original writing on the back. After scanning and archiving, make sure they're preserved just as they are."

When she reached the last page, Evelyn found a single photo tucked away. It wasn't an old one. Judging by the colors and the paper, it looked pretty recent.

In the picture, two young people, a guy and a girl, stood on a balcony, smiling. The girl had short hair and a round face, and the guy was tall and skinny, wearing glasses.

Grace was caught off guard when she saw the photo. "Who are they?" she asked.

Evelyn blinked in surprise. "You don't recognize them?"

Grace furrowed her brow, studied the photo for a while, and then shook her head. "I don't know them... How did this end up in my album?"

Evelyn flipped the photo over, but there was nothing written on the back. She looked at the people in the picture again. The girl looked familiar, but Evelyn just couldn't place her.

"Maybe they're relatives," Evelyn guessed. "Maybe it just ended up here by mistake."

"Maybe," Grace said, putting the photo back, but her eyes lingered on it for a moment.

Evelyn didn't dwell on it and went back to work. She carefully peeled off a stuck photo with her tweezers, and underneath was another one, in which a baby was wrapped in a blanket, eyes still closed.

"Who is this?" Evelyn asked.

Grace leaned in, studied the photo for a while, and then shook her head. "I can't remember... Maybe it's Kevin? No, Kevin wasn't born in this month..."

She thought for a long time and then shook her head again. "I'm old. I can't remember anything."

She said it so casually, like it was just a fact of life. But Evelyn felt a sudden softness in her heart.

She gently put the photo back and said, "No worries. We can take our time to remember."

Leonard set the recorder on the windowsill, pointing it outside.

The sounds of the street drifted in. The rustling of old oak leaves in the wind, the distant rumble of cars passing by, and the faint voices drifting up from downstairs. He pressed record, and all those sounds were captured and saved as a file.

It was his third day living in the old house. In just three days, he'd recorded over twenty audio clips—the creaking stairs, the gurgling heating pipes, Grace listening to the radio downstairs, and the neighbor next door cooking.

He knew it was kind of unhealthy, but he just couldn't help himself.

Every time he pressed record, he'd think of his father. He'd remember that empty, distant look in his eyes, and that word "Dad." If only he'd captured his father's voice back then, even just a single sentence, he could listen to it now.

But there was nothing.

He had searched the bookshelf on the third floor, but The Crossing Dust was nowhere to be found. Just the usual classics. Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and a few dime novels from the early twentieth century.

He pulled out every single book and gave them a shake. No hidden notes, no clues. Maybe the book was never here at all. Maybe that lead was a mistake, and the book had been sold off, burned, or thrown out years ago.

But he didn't want to give up.

That afternoon, the woman fixing the photo album showed up again. When Leonard went downstairs for some water, he spotted her in the living room, white gloves on, tweezers in hand, totally focused as she gently lifted old photos from the pages.

"Professor Brooks," she looked up and greeted him.

"Ms. Chase." He nodded back.

"Just call me Evelyn," she said with a grin.

Leonard hesitated, unsure what to call her. "Evelyn" felt almost too familiar, but "Evelyn Chase" was way too stiff. After a moment, he settled on "Evelyn."

"How's the restoration going today?" Leonard asked.

"I'm working on some old photos from the forties," Evelyn replied, pointing at the pile in front of her. "There are a few of Grace when she was little."

Leonard leaned in for a better look. The photos were black and white, faded and yellowed, with worn corners. In one, a little girl wore a wool coat with a round collar, her hair in two braids, standing beside an adult.

"Is this Grace?" Leonard asked.

"Yep, she said she was about four or five here," Evelyn said, picking up another photo. "And this one's her mom, the one whose handwriting was so nice. Remember yesterday?"

Leonard looked at the photo.

It showed a young woman, standing on the same balcony as the one in the picture on the dresser, but she looked younger here. Her face was blurred by time, but her posture was still graceful, and she wore a gentle smile.

"These photos," Leonard asked suddenly, "if nobody can recognize the people in them, does that mean we'll never find out who they were?"

Evelyn looked up at him. "Pretty much, unless there's something written on the back."

She flipped over a photo and pointed. "Look. 'Mother and granddaughter, summer 1953.' If someone left a note, then we know."

Leonard nodded, keeping quiet.

But that wasn't what he truly wanted to ask. What he really wondered was, if no one wrote anything down and no one remembered, would those faces, those names, those stories just fade away forever? Just like his father.

But he kept it to himself.

Evelyn kept working, moving slowly and carefully. She used her tweezers to gently lift the corner of a photo, taking her time with each one. Sometimes she'd pause, move on to another, or grab her magnifying glass to check the details.

Leonard stood off to the side, watching her.

"You're watching me," Evelyn said out of nowhere.

Leonard blinked, surprised. "You noticed?"

"Yeah. When you can't recognize faces, your other senses get sharper," she said with a smile. "But don't worry. I can't see your face, so I don't know what you're looking at."

Leonard felt a bit awkward and looked away.

"You're probably thinking," Evelyn said as she worked, "it's kind of odd for someone who can't recognize faces to be doing rare book conservation, right?"

"I wasn't—" Leonard started.

"Lots of people ask," she said with a relaxed tone. "Actually, it's the other way around. People like me are great for this job.

"Books and photos don't change faces. What you see one day is exactly the same the next. They never mess with your head."

Leonard listened, saying nothing.

Evelyn continued, "But people aren't like that. They change all the time. Maybe they know you one day and forget you the next. I can't keep track, so I don't bother trying. Besides, they'll just look different again tomorrow."

She kept her tone light, but Leonard picked up on something deeper.