In my defense, I was four years old at the time, and I should not have been left unsupervised. And nobody ever touched the colorful boxes of puzzles on the bottom shelf, they just told me not to touch them. How was I supposed to not play with something that everyone told me not to touch?

When Aunt Bea caught me on the living room floor surrounded by puzzle pieces - stacked, spread out, shoved around into lots of interesting shapes that did not at all match the lovely family photo on the front - she made a big fuss about getting all the pieces back into the box RIGHT NOW, and ended up doing most of the work for me, really.

I didn’t see any need to mention that all the pieces she could see on the floor were not all the pieces of the puzzle. I’d been playing hide and seek with the pieces that had people’s faces on them.

And here I am now, ten years later, at my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary. When they finally decided to take out those old puzzles that had been their wedding present, with photos of long-dead family members. It was a big to-do, everyone sitting around the dining room table, telling stories and helping each other put the pieces together.

And the closer we get to completing the puzzle, the more nervous I get, because along the way I realized that nobody in the picture is going to have a face when we’re done. Grandma and Grandpa’s precious puzzle cannot be completed.

Because I have no freaking clue where four-year-old me hid the pieces. And it’s not like I can admit to it NOW.