I found the photo at the bottom of a box of old receipts. Thanksgiving 2018. Everyone still in the frame.
I was twenty-two then, still living at home. Cody had already moved to the city, but he came back for that one meal.
The takeout menu from the Chinese place is still in the box, too. He wrote in the margins: 'Too much MSG.' He always did that.
I had a pen pal from when I was twelve, a girl named Sarah in Indiana. We wrote for years, then stopped. I wonder if she ever thinks about it.
I was crop dusting over the lake that afternoon. The smell of fuel was on my hands when I pulled the photo out.
I called Cody that night. Three years of silence. He answered on the second ring.
'I was just looking at the same photo,' he said. That was the door. We both walked through.