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Ava doesn’t have a family photo album. If she ever had one, it was destroyed in the car crash, like her childhood. Sometimes, she imagines that she could find it again, tugged into a cardboard box in some storage space in Portugal, where their landlord might have kept the things they left behind, hoping that they would return to claim them one day. But she doesn’t keep that hope alive. Most likely she will never see what her life was before that fatal crash, and she’s made her peace with it.
Beatrice doesn’t think she has a family photo album. Her parents weren’t the kind of people who bothered to take pictures on whatever business trip passed for a family holiday. She knows they have some pictures, class photos and tournament pictures taken by her coachs, but none was given to her when she joined the OCS. Part of her wishes she had one, she tells Ava one evening, and Ava jokes that she must have been a cute kid and makes her feel better about it, but deep down, it doesn’t quite fill the hole.
For Valentine’s Day, Ava presents Beatrice with a large package, tenderly and clumsily wrapped.
“I thought we said no gift,” Beatrice berates her, even as her own is hidden in the drawer of her bedside table.
“Yeah, yeah, just open it.”
So Beatrice does. Inside the cardboard box, she finds a beautiful, black leather-bound photo album. The word “family” is hetched in golden letters on the cover. It’s not empty either. Flipping inside, Beatrice finds pictures dating back to when she joined the OCS. It’s her, and Lilith, and Mary, and Shannon, and later, Camila. After that are pictures she has never seen, pictures she assumes Ava must have taken on their last trip to the Cat’s Craddle. Pictures of Yasmine agonizing after training, and Camila teaching the new recruits, and Mother Superion feeding the stray cats in the garden. Then, it’s pictures of the two of them in Switzerland, during their two months in hiding. Their time training, decorating their apartment, going grocery shopping and working at the bar. The most mondain of activities which had been so new to Ava back then.
Finally, a third of the way through the album, she finds pictures of them now, traveling, living, loving. There’s still many pages to fill, and Beatrice can’t help but contemplate the blank pages taking up most of the photo album, waiting for their own pictures.
“I know it won’t replace the childhood memories we lost,” Ava says, “but I thought we should have one.”
Beatrice is close to tears and her heart has never been filled with more love. The photo album is kept in a proeminent place in their living room. Soon, Beatrice adds a little 1 on the first page, and buys another. It is the second of many more to come.