A month later, Mom’s photography class held a small exhibition at the community center.
She displayed three photographs.
The first was my graduation picture, the one where she had been standing just outside the frame.
The second showed only one of her hands as she hurried to reach a camera timer.
The third was my favorite.
Mom and I were sitting together on the bench in her backyard, laughing because she’d nearly tripped over the garden hose while racing into the photograph.
Her scars were visible.
She hadn’t tried to hide them.
An older woman stood in front of that photograph for a long time.
“I’m always the one taking pictures in my family,” she told Mom. “There are hardly any photographs of me with my children.”
Mom smiled at her.
“Then you should get in the next one.”
Later that evening, we returned to Mom’s house before meeting Malcolm for dinner.
I found her standing in front of the bedroom mirror, putting on lipstick.
The mirror hadn’t been covered in years.
I leaned against the doorway.
“Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever wish you looked the way you did before?”
She stopped and studied her reflection.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”
She put the lipstick back into her purse.
“But I spent so many years thinking those scars were the worst thing the fire left behind.”
I waited.
She touched the side of her neck.
“They weren’t. The worst part was believing Gordon when he made me feel like I should be ashamed of them.”
From downstairs, we heard Malcolm calling that we were going to miss our reservation.
Mom laughed.
She picked up her purse and walked past the mirror without checking her reflection again.
For the first time, I understood that the little girl who had spent hours learning to cover her mother’s scars had been trying to solve the wrong problem.
Mom had never needed me to make her look like the woman she was before the fire.
She had needed time to realize that woman had never disappeared.
