by Barbara Vine
Here is Eden's letter of reproach, admonishing my father for my rudeness, and here is Vera telling him of her intention to live in Laurel Cottage and make a home there for Eden. Vera, photographed with Francis on her knee, has a brown dappling on her hair, spots of my father's blood from the finger he cut when wrenching that picture from its frame. Soulful Eden in the photographer's studio in Londonderry lies between radiant Eden in her arum-lily wedding-dress and Vera and Gerald with the dome and the banyan tree.
I go upstairs and fetch the box and put them all back, laying in last of all, placing on the top of the pile, the picture of us all in Vera's garden in summertime, a united family, wearing our innocent smiles, not yet imagining those births and marriages and deaths to come.