Grandma Ardis made a small sound by the door. When I looked over, she had put her hand flat on the counter, as if the floor had tipped slightly, but her face was the same.
"It was mine first," my father said. His voice came out rough, and he cleared his throat and tried again. "I bought it in nineteen ninety-seven. Used. At a shop in Syracuse that's not there anymore. I paid a hundred and ten dollars for it and I ate peanut butter on saltines for a month." He looked at the camera in Niva's arms. "I took it everywhere. Your mother used to steal it out of my bag. Every time we went somewhere, I'd go to take a picture, and it'd be gone, and I'd look around and she'd be off somewhere pointing it at a mailbox or a dog or a guy selling pretzels. So for our second anniversary I just gave it to her. I wrote her that stupid card. I figured I'd get another one."
"Did you?" I said.
"No," he said. "Niva was born the next year."
He said it simply, the way you would say it rained on Tuesday. Niva flinched as if he'd put his hand on a bruise.
"So Mom sent it," I said slowly. I was working it out as I said it. "Mom sent it to me. For my birthday. She cut up your old card and used it as the tag." I looked at the block capitals on the front. That didn't look like my mother, who writes everything in loopy purple pen with circles over the i's even in work emails. But maybe she had been trying to disguise it. Maybe she wanted to surprise me. Maybe— "That's why you were mad. You thought she was being, I don't know. Mean. Sending your card back. Is that why you gave it to Niva?"
My father opened his mouth and closed it.
"Your mother didn't send it," said my grandmother.
Everybody turned to look at her.
She still had her coat on. She was leaning on her cane with both hands now, and for the first time since she'd walked in she looked her age, which is seventy-eight. "Your mother hasn't had that camera in four years," she said. "She didn't take it with her to Charlotte. She left it on the closet shelf in the front hall, in the case, with the strap wrapped around it the way your father always wrapped it. And that card was in the case. She'd kept it in there all those years, in the little pocket for the lens cap."