The dust billowed across the top of the cardboard garrison of the attic as the hatch swung open, collecting in the air like powdered memories swirling above the countless family artifacts before settling back to cover them again. Quinn pulled herself up the top rung of the ladder and through the opening, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light coming through the slated openings in the half closed shutters. She had been putting off this task for nearly a week, but with the service slated for tomorrow, there was no more room for procrastination.

Quinn was the only child of the very normal, conservative, reputable and always very content and did we mention normal, thank you very much pair, Barbara and Stuart. Throughout her life, that had meant that she had been the only recipient of their love, of their evaluation (judgement is such a harsh word, isn’t), and now, of the endless to do list for her father’s funeral. Today’s task - tracking down old photos for the memorial service slideshow.

It was not that her parents did not have ANY family photos displayed. There had always been their wedding portrait in a frame somewhere, a scattering of images of her childhood, and her current year’s school photo was on display until her senior portrait took its place with the wedding portrait in perpetuity. But in their sizable home in Northwest DC that resembled an art gallery both in style and contents, the family photo to classical masterpiece ratio rivaled that of some public school systems - charter schools not included. So the task of putting together the number of photos the funeral home suggested for the requested slideshow had presented a challenge, the solution to which found Quinn inhaling dust and dodging cobwebs.

She opened the first box. Christmas decorations. The second. Ski equipment. The sixth. Extremely outdated bank statements. The tenth, finally, smaller boxes of faded photographs, slides and negatives. She pulled out the first box and set it on the old secretary desk against the back wall and began going through looking for contents relevant to the task at hand.

The pictures were an assemblage of faces familiar and foreign to her. She began to recognize younger versions of her parents right away, and slowly images of other distant relatives and friends began to become discernible through the layers of age. Her aunt Susan laughing with her mother in a park Quinn recognized as the one near the church they attended a few times with her grandparents. Her parents in front of a house with mountains in the background that must have been when they lived in Boulder before she was born, right after they were married.

Her parents had never told her many stories about that time. She only knew that they lived there for a few years when they were first married when her father was an associate professor at UC Boulder. They had been settled in DC for three years when she was born, and as that was the only life and home she had ever known questioning her parents about their life “before” never made much sense. She picked up a small stack of the photos and sat down to examine them closer.

Her father standing in front of the Flatirons striking a muscle man pose. Her mother, laughing with her hands on her hips in front of the red Volvo station wagon they still had when she had come along. Her parents in front of a house on a hill with a chain link fence that must of been their first home together. Her parents sitting on the front porch looking at each other. Her mom walking up the front steps holding a baby.

Holding a baby.

Quinn looked at the lid of the box she had just pulled the photos from. In faded blue ink, she made out the words “photos 1977-1979.” She had been born in 1983.

She felt like she was going crazy, and her mind start grasping for explanations. It could be a cousin, or perhaps the child of a friend. She started flipping through the photos faster, hoping to find a reasonable answer. The child in the living room of her parents home. Her parents bathing the child. The child at a table that looked set for Thanksgiving. The child in the arms of Quinn’s grandparents.

A neighbor child is not present for holidays, and they certainly would not have photographed themselves bathing the child of a friend. A relative would have also been in the photos if it was a cousin. Her stomach sunk with every new piece of evidence, the truth creeping in like the bile at the back of her throat.

She had no idea who she was or what was true. But one thing was very clear. She had never truly been an only child.