The girl in the photograph had been dead for forty years.
So why was she holding my hand?
I found the picture on a Sunday afternoon while helping my grandmother clean the attic.
The photograph was small, faded, and slightly bent at the corners. It showed my family standing outside my grandparents' old house, the same house where my mother had grown up and where I had spent nearly every summer of my childhood.
There were nine people I recognized in the picture.
My grandparents stood in the middle.
My mother, barely twenty years old, stood beside them.
My two uncles were on the other side.
A few cousins stood in front.
And behind everyone, near the old apple tree, stood a girl I had never seen before.
She looked about ten years old.
She wore a pale dress and had long dark hair tied with a white ribbon.
At first, I thought she was simply another relative whose face I didn't recognize.
Then I noticed something strange.
Her left hand was wrapped around mine.
I stared at the photograph.
I was six years old when it was taken.
I remembered that day.
Or at least I thought I did.
I remembered the apple tree. I remembered the old wooden swing. I remembered my grandmother making lemonade while everyone gathered outside for photographs.
But I had no memory of the girl.
I carried the photograph downstairs.
"Grandma?"
She was sitting in the kitchen, sorting old letters.
When she saw what I was holding, the color disappeared from her face.
She didn't ask where I found it.
She simply whispered, "Put that away."
I laughed nervously.
"Who is she?"
Grandmother looked at the photograph again.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she took it from my hand.
"Nobody."
"Nobody?"
"Some photographs are better left forgotten."
She placed it face down on the table.
I picked it up again.
"Grandma, she's holding my hand."
"I know."
That answer frightened me more than anything else.
"You know?"
She closed her eyes.
"Your mother told you never to go near the old apple tree, didn't she?"
I nodded.
"She said it was dangerous."
"It wasn't the tree."
Grandmother's voice was barely audible.
"It was the girl."
I waited for her to explain.
She didn't.
Instead, she stood and walked toward the sink.
"Who was she?"
"My sister."
I stared at her.
"You had a sister?"
Grandmother nodded.
"Her name was Clara."
I looked at the photograph again.
"Where is she now?"
Grandmother's hands began to tremble.
"Dead."
"When?"
"Forty years ago."
I did the math.
That would have been before my mother was born.
"How?"
Grandmother turned toward me.
"She disappeared."
I frowned.
"Then how do you know she's dead?"
My grandmother's eyes filled with tears.
"Because she came back."
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I kept the photograph on my bedside table.
At three in the morning, I switched on the lamp and looked at it again.
The girl was still there.
Clara.
Her face was strangely calm.
Almost peaceful.
But there was something about her expression that bothered me.
She wasn't looking at the camera.
She was looking directly at me.
And for the first time, I wondered whether the photograph had always looked that way.
Or whether Clara had only just noticed me.