It was at that moment-thinking about her own parents, thinking about how much older Emma and Max looked now than in last year’s apple-picking photo shoot-when she stumbled across the bizarre photograph.

Grace frowned.

The picture was near the middle of the pack. Closer to the back maybe. It was the same size, fitting neatly in with the others, though the backing sheet was somewhat flimsier. Cheaper stock, she thought. Like a high-end office-supply photocopy maybe.

Grace checked the next picture. No duplicate this time. That was strange. Only one copy of this photograph. She thought about that. The picture must have fallen in somehow, mixed up with another roll.

Because this photograph did not belong to her.

It was a mistake. That was the obvious explanation. Think for a moment about the quality workmanship of, say, Fuzz Pellet. He was more than capable of screwing up, right? Of putting the wrong photograph in the middle of her pack?

That was probably what was going on here.

Someone else’s photograph had gotten mixed in with hers.

Or maybe…

The photograph had an old look about it-not that it was black-and-white or antique sepia. Nothing like that. The print was in color, but the hues seemed… off somehow-saturated, sun-faded, lacking the vibrancy one would expect in this day and age. The people in it too. Their clothes, their hair, their makeup-all dated. From fifteen, maybe twenty years ago.

Grace put it down on the table to take a closer look.

The images in the photograph were all slightly blurred. There were four people-no, wait, one more in the corner-five people in the photograph. There were two men and three women, all in their late teens, early twenties maybe-at least, the ones she could see clearly enough appeared to be around that age.

College students, Grace thought.

They had the jeans, the sweatshirts, the unkempt hair, that attitude, the casual stance of budding independence.