He nods his head. “I did some serious partying with those guys.” He sits down on the floor beside me, drinking his wine, and watches me flip through the pages. There aren’t many pictures and most of them are shoved in haphazardly, as if he couldn’t be bothered to slide them into the individual pockets.

“Are there any pictures where you’re not drinking beer?” I ask. “Or holding a beer? Or standing beside a keg of beer?”

“Probably not,” he answers.

I laugh when I notice Daniel’s floppy, middle-part hairstyle, and I can’t help but tease him. “Tell me, how influential were the Backstreet Boys in shaping your look back then?”

“Very funny,” he says. “I’ll have you know I got a lot of attention from the girls with that hair.”

“I’m sure you did,” I agree. The truth is, it didn’t detract from his looks, not in the least. But if anything, he’s more attractive now, as if each year that passes only improves his appearance.

I stand up and swap the first photo album for the next—this one even dustier. The first picture is of Daniel and a girl. She has blonde hair and she’s wearing it in a shoulder-length, fully layered style just like I wore in the nineties and that neither of us would be caught dead in today. Her eyes are blue, not brown, yet the resemblance is such that we could be sisters. She’s sitting on Daniel’s lap with a red Solo cup in her hand. They appear to be laughing, as if the photographer snapped the photo at just the right time. Midjoke. Page after page of Daniel and the blonde girl follow: pictures of them in formal attire, in jeans and sweatshirts, and two full pages of them enjoying a tropical vacation.

When I reach the end of the album the blonde girl is still in it. In one photo they have their arms around each other and she’s wearing a diamond ring on her left hand. Engagement photos. It hits me suddenly that I’m looking at Daniel’s ex-wife. “Is this her?” I ask.

He nods, his eyes a bit glassy. I’ve never even seen him tipsy before, but he’s well on his way.

“What’s her name?”

“Jessica. Jessie.”

I come to the end of the album and stand to retrieve the last one. The cover of this one isn’t dusty at all. Daniel goes and sits on the couch, knocking back a big drink of wine. I sit down on the couch next to him and open to the first page. There’s a picture of Daniel in a cap and gown at his college graduation, and several more when he completed his training at the police academy. One of him as a rookie policeman, in full uniform. The next photos are from his wedding. I look at them silently. Jessie looks beautiful, the big hair now smoothed into a low chignon with flowers surrounding it. Daniel’s wineglass is empty and he heads to the kitchen for a refill. I flip past the wedding photos and think that maybe this was a bad idea. He probably doesn’t want me looking at pictures of his other life, but he’s too polite to tell me not to.

I flip to the next page and the pictures on it take my breath away.

Jessie is very, very pregnant. She’s smiling and Daniel is sitting beside her, his hand on her stomach, fingers splayed as if he’s trying to encompass all that’s inside of her in one handful, which would be impossible because she is clearly full-term. Time stands still and yet speeds up as I turn the pages, and my sense of foreboding increases. Daniel sits back down on the couch, but he’s not watching me; he’s staring off into space, very still.

On the next page a smiling baby, cradled in Jessie’s arms, wears a blue cap and looks minutes old. Now I know whose photo is in the frame on Daniel’s dresser. The images that follow—Jessie holding the baby, Daniel holding the baby, and one of Daniel kissing the baby’s forehead—bring tears to my eyes because I know where this is heading. Feel it in the pit of my stomach and yet I can’t look away.

There are pages and pages of pictures and then suddenly there aren’t.

I close the album and set it on the coffee table, blinking back the tears. “What’s your son’s name?” I ask.

“Gabriel.”

“That’s a beautiful name.” I don’t ask any more questions. If I’ve learned one thing about men, it’s that if Daniel wants to share, he’ll share.

“He died of SIDS when he was three months old,” Daniel says, and when he looks at me I see the mournful expression on his face.

“I’m so sorry.” Tears fill my eyes and I scold myself because they won’t help anything, but I can’t stem their flow. I wipe my eyes and will the tears to stop, which only makes them multiply.

Daniel begins to speak. “I came home late. There was a multicar accident on the parkway and I’d been up most of the night tying up loose ends and submitting paperwork. I checked on Gabriel when I got home. He was just getting over his first cold and hadn’t been sleeping well, but he seemed fine. I went to bed and the sound of Jessie screaming when she went in to get him the next morning woke me up. We called an ambulance right away, but he was already gone. She just kept screaming, and I will never forget that sound.”

I look at Daniel and the sorrow I see in his eyes cuts me to the quick. “I’m so sorry,” I say. The problems Chris and I have faced suddenly pale in comparison. It’s one thing to lose a job, but losing a child is life altering. Incomprehensible to me.

“We buried him and we tried our best to get on with our lives. But Jessie just couldn’t. We had a huge fight one night and she admitted that she blamed me. She said maybe if I’d picked him up when I came home that night he might not have died. But the doctor told us it would have been nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact minute he stopped breathing.”

I nod but don’t say anything. Daniel doesn’t need me to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. That it was a tragic accident. I’m sure he’s heard every variation of those sentiments.

“We stayed together for another year. Went to counseling. Talked about having another baby. But she was just so angry, and I was the nearest thing to it. I told her I’d let her go, so she could find someone new and start over.”

“Did she?”

“I don’t know.”

He looks so incredibly sad. Overwhelmed by my need to comfort him, I ignore the warning bells clanging in my head that this is a very bad idea, and I reach out and put my arms around Daniel and lay my head on his chest. He doesn’t do anything at first. His heartbeat pounds under my cheek and his breathing speeds up, but his hands remain at his sides. Finally, he wraps his arms around me, and after a few minutes he seems calmer.

“Do you still love her?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

He holds me tight and one of his hands slips under the back of my blouse. He rubs my skin in a circular pattern with his fingertips. It feels amazing. My brain is sending all kinds of fight or flight signals, but the light pressure of his touch eventually dispels my anxiety, and I tell myself that there is nothing even remotely sexual about this situation, at least not to me. After a while, I lift my head off his chest.

“Stay with me for a while,” he says.

I’m suddenly exhausted, and the fatigue runs bone deep. It’s as if the weight of his words is more than I can handle; I can’t imagine what it’s like to be the one to say them. The temperature in the room feels as if it’s dropped ten degrees, and the cold surrounds me. “Okay,” I whisper.

Daniel reaches over and flicks off the lamp on the table beside the couch. The firelight is the only thing that illuminates the room. Daniel shifts me, so that my head is in his lap. He strokes my hair.

“Do I remind you of her?” I ask.

“You remind me of the good parts,” he says. He notices my shivering and the soft fabric of the throw blanket settles over my body. “Better?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know about me?” Daniel asks.

Right before I fall asleep I say, “No.”