MY FINGERS TRACED HER FACE IN THE ALBUM AND HIS NAME WAS ON THE BACK
I found the dusty box pushed way back under the guest room bed while looking for holiday decorations, the cardboard peeling at the edges. Inside was an old photo album, thick with faded covers and brittle pages that felt fragile to the touch. Dust puffed up as I pulled it out into the dim hallway light, catching the late afternoon sunbeam filtering through the window. It looked completely foreign, definitely not ours, shoved deep under the bed like it was hidden on purpose, forgotten or intentionally concealed.
I flipped through the pages slowly, a weird sense of unease growing, the **stale, dusty smell** filling my nose with every turn. Pictures of people I didn’t recognize, old cars I couldn’t place, forgotten houses that meant nothing to me scrolled past my eyes. Who did this belong to? Then, a familiar face caught my eye on a later page, younger and almost unrecognizable at first, but undeniably her, smiling up from a picnic blanket in vibrant color. It *was* her.
My breath hitched, and my heart started pounding hard and fast in my chest as I reached the last few pages, fingers tracing the edge of the thick paper. The photos became more recent, leading up to a small, loose photo tucked into a corner. My hand was shaking as I lifted it, and there, scrawled on the back in faded ink, was a name I knew instantly. *His* name. “You said you never knew her!” I whispered aloud, the sound swallowed by the quiet house, my voice trembling as I sank onto the **cold hardwood floor**, the reality hitting me like a physical blow. He always swore on everything he had never met her before last year, before she started working at his office.
He came home then, the garage door rumbling open, his boots thudding on the kitchen floor, whistling some tune. He called my name, cheerful, oblivious. I just sat there in the hallway, the photo album open on my lap, the picture with his name on the back clutched in my sweating hand.
I looked closer at the picture and saw she wasn’t alone on that blanket.
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*His whistling stopped abruptly in the doorway. “Hey, honey? Everything okay? I called you.” His voice was tentative now, no longer cheerful. He took a step towards me, his eyes falling on the open album and my face. He saw the picture clutched in my hand. His gaze fixed on it, and the colour drained from his face.
“What’s…” he started, his voice rough.
I lifted the photo, my hand still trembling. “You said you never knew her,” I whispered again, my voice stronger this time, laced with a cold accusation. “You swore you’d never met her before she started working for you last year.”
He hesitated, his eyes flicking between the photo and my face. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I… I didn’t,” he stammered, but the denial sounded weak, already crumbling.
“Then what is this?” I demanded, pushing the photo towards him. “Your name. Scrawled right there on the back. And her face. Young, but it’s her.”
He sank slowly onto the opposite side of the hallway, his boots scraping faintly on the floor. He wouldn’t take the picture from me, just stared at it, his shoulders slumping. “That… that was years ago,” he murmured, almost to himself.
“Years ago?” I repeated, the words stinging. “So you *did* know her? You lied?”
He finally looked up, his eyes clouded with something I couldn’t quite decipher – regret? Shame? “It wasn’t… not like you think,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “That was a picnic. A friend of a friend’s thing. Maybe… maybe fifteen years ago? Longer? She was just… there.”
“Just there?” I echoed, incredulous. “And you remembered her well enough to have your name on the back of her photo?”
“No! I didn’t write that!” he insisted. “Someone else must have. Maybe the person who took the picture, or whoever owned the album… just noting who was there.” He gestured vaguely. “It was a big group. Casual.”
“A big group?” I looked at the photo again, thinking of that last detail. “She wasn’t alone on that blanket,” I said softly, the words tasting like ash.
His gaze followed mine to the picture. “No,” he confirmed, his voice flat. “She was… she was with someone else.” He paused, swallowing hard. “And I was with someone else too.”
The air crackled with unspoken history, with the weight of years and forgotten connections. It wasn’t the confession of a secret, ongoing affair I had braced myself for, but something more complicated, messier. An old, brief intersection of lives, perhaps insignificant to him at the time, yet significant enough for someone to note his presence. And a lie, a blatant omission, born maybe of awkwardness, or a desire to keep the past simple, or perhaps something else entirely.
I didn’t know if I believed him, not entirely. The lie still stood between us, solid and sharp. But the image of him, years younger, at a picnic with someone else, while she was there with someone else, didn’t fit the narrative of a secret, forbidden romance beginning now. It fit the narrative of two people who had crossed paths long before fate, or the office, brought them back into proximity. The question wasn’t just *if* he knew her, but *why* he felt the need to deny it so vehemently. That unanswered question still hung heavy in the air, threatening to crush the life out of us.
He reached out tentatively, not for the photo, but for my hand holding it. “Talk to me,” he pleaded, his voice low. “Please. Let’s talk about this.”
I looked down at the dusty album on my lap, then at the photo, then at his face, etched with weariness and something that looked painfully like fear. The path ahead felt uncertain, shrouded in the dust of old secrets and present betrayals. But for the first time since I found the album, I didn’t feel completely lost. There was a story here, a different one than I had imagined, and maybe, just maybe, we could find our way through it, one difficult conversation at a time. I didn’t let go of the photo, but I didn’t pull my hand away from his either.