“While watching my porch.”
“Fair.”
Sophie removed one headphone.
“Can you two stop flirting near my ears?”
Jack smiled.
“You can leave.”
“It’s my garage too.”
Elena and Jack both looked at her.
Sophie shrugged.
“Historically.”
Jack laughed.
Elena leaned against the workbench.
Her hip touched a cardboard box.
Jack pointed instantly.
“Do not.”
She looked down.
Then laughed.
The box contained photographs.
Different ones now.
Years of them.
Sophie’s school recital.
Elena’s first birthday home.
Their first Christmas.
Jack’s new shop opening.
A camping trip where it rained four days.
Sophie asleep between both parents on a couch.
One photograph showed Elena and Jack kissing under Christmas lights while Sophie made a disgusted expression in the foreground.
Elena picked it up.
“Classic.”
Jack smiled.
“Terrible photographer.”
“Sophie took it.”
“Exactly.”
Sophie threw a pencil at him.
Elena looked through the photographs.
Then became quiet.
“What?”
Jack asked.
She held one up.
The original.
Seven years earlier.
Baby Sophie.
Young Jack.
Young Elena.
Same garage.
The photograph that had fallen onto the concrete and cracked their lives open.
Jack came beside her.
Sophie got off the stool.
“That one.”
Elena nodded.
“That one.”
Sophie looked at herself.
“I was bald.”
“You were adorable.”
“I was bald.”
Jack said, “Very aerodynamic.”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
Elena touched the edge.
“I used to hate this picture.”
Jack looked at her.
“Why?”
“Because it was everything I lost.”
Sophie leaned against her mother.
“And now?”
Elena looked around the garage.
At Jack.
At Sophie.
At the newer photographs.
“Now it’s just the first page.”
Jack kissed her temple.
Sophie groaned.
“Disgusting.”
Elena smiled.
Jack returned to the engine.
He had one more secret.
Not a federal one.
Not a dangerous one.
A small velvet box hidden inside the top drawer of his toolbox.
He had carried it for two weeks.
He was waiting.
Not because he doubted.
Because their relationship had been built on learning that timing mattered.
Choice mattered.
Nothing should feel inevitable simply because history wanted symmetry.
That evening, after Sophie went to a friend’s house, Jack finished Elena’s car.
He closed the hood.
“All done.”
Elena held out her hand.
“Key.”
Jack gave it to her.
She looked suspicious.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“Maybe I enjoy competent work.”
“You’re strange.”
“Yes.”
She moved toward the driver’s door.
Jack said, “Elena.”
She turned.
He leaned against the same workbench.
Five years earlier, she had stood near that spot shaking because a photograph had exposed her.