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the computer and clicked the arrow that would open the next photo. Judith thought she detected a slight hesitation.
    The next photo was a color image of a young man with thick, shaggy hair that covered his ears and a thin beard that gripped his cheeks and chin. The background was blurred but Judith could make out a few buildings and other people. The man in the picture stood in a busy place.
    â€œYou?” Judith asked.
    â€œYeah. Every girl’s dream, right?” His chuckle held no mirth. Then, as if talking to himself, he mumbled, “I’ve never seen this before. The indistinct background makes me think the photographer used a telephoto lens.”
    â€œCan you tell where you were?”
    He shook his head. “Not enough visual clues. My best guess is that it was during my graduate days. If so, then those blurry buildings belong to UC Berkley.”
    â€œHow old were you then?”
    â€œTwenty-five. I’m forty-eight now, so that’s about twenty-three years ago — ”
    â€œNineteen eighty-five, just like in the document we just read. My picture was taken when I was twenty-one. I was twenty-one in 1984.” She could see Luke doing the mental math. “I’m forty-five. Don’t strain your brain.”
    He smiled. “Sensitive about your age?”
    â€œNo. I am what I am.”
    â€œNow you sound like Popeye.”
    â€œJust open the last photo.”
    Luke did and the sight of it made Judith gasp. Before her appeared the image of a black-haired boy. Thin, like most eight-year-olds, he sat on a gray rug with a white vein pattern. He wore khaki pants cut off just below the knee and a green T-shirt. He sat cross-legged looking at the camera. His feet were clad in athletic shoes.
    â€œThat … that must be him.” Luke’s words barely crossed the distance to Judith.
    Judith swallowed hard before attempting to speak. “Luke, what … what’s wrong with his eyes?”

six
    M arlin Find paced his empty office oblivious to the passing of time. Judith —
Mom
— had once again gottenunder his skin, and he was doing a masterful job of cultivating the anger. She never should have spoken to him the way she did; never avoided his calls. But she had and she was doing it more and more.
    It wouldn’t be so bad if she kept her disdain of him private, but he knew,
just knew
, that others were starting to talk behind his back. The fact that his father had left the business to her and not him wounded him a hundred times a day. Find, Inc., should be his, not hers. He was flesh and blood with the old man, all she had was a marriage certificate.
    He stopped his pacing, forced himself to take several deep breaths, and ran a hand over his head. His hair was brown, short on the sides, long on the top. The hair felt stiff; it was caked in gel. The longer hair on top added an inch to his height. He wanted every inch he could get.
    Compensation. That had been much of his life. Compensating for low grades, compensating for being shorter than most men, compensating for being second place to the woman who moved in when he was fifteen. At ten years younger than his father, his new stepmother was only fifteen years older than Marlin. He had never accepted her. Oh, she had tried to draw him in, a ploy as transparent as glass, but Marlin never fell for it.
    At home, he had played the game. Not wanting to upset his father, who had a temper he wasn’t afraid to show, Marlin had played polite and obedient, and gagged on every moment of it.
    Now Dad was gone, buried on the hillside of the most prestigious cemetery in Southern California. He had earned that final dignity. Although a father at twenty, his dad had worked his way from finish carpenter to founder and owner of one of the most competitive and respected interior supplycompanies. During that time, perhaps because of the sacrificial hours he worked to make something out of nothing, Marlin’s mother