Nina was checking the pockets of an old coat before taking it to the charity shop when her fingers caught on a torn seam.
Something stiff lay inside the lining.
She pulled out a photograph.
Her mother and father stood together, much younger, holding up their hands to show matching rings.
Nina frowned.
Her parents had always said they never married.
She carried the photograph into the bedroom.
Her mother sat on the bed while her father stood beside the wardrobe.
“Were you married?”
They exchanged a look.
“Yes,” her father said.
“Then why do you keep telling people you weren’t?”
Her mother reached for the coat.
Nina held it back.
There had been a small ceremony, they explained. No guests. No photographs except this one.
Then came debts, constant arguments, and a separation neither handled well. By the time Nina was old enough to ask, they had reduced the whole marriage to something they preferred not to discuss.
“But you’re together now.”
“We tried again,” her mother said.
“And you didn’t think I’d want to know?”
Her father sat down.
“We thought the part that mattered was that we came back.”
Nina studied the two smiling people in the picture.
“What about everything in between?”
That evening, they told her more.
They disagreed about details. Sometimes they stopped to correct each other. For once, their past sounded like something real.
A second object had fallen from the coat lining: a receipt from the small restaurant where they ate after the ceremony.
The place was still open.
A month later, all three of them went there.
Their parents tried to remember which table they had chosen.
Nina photographed them while they argued about it.
Then she handed the phone to the waiter and joined them.
End of Narative
