When Memories Lie

Thanksgiving. I was back home in rural Vermont, sifting through our old attic, looking for ornaments.

Then I found it: a Polaroid of a 10-year-old me with a boy named "Cousin Leo," a cousin I’d never heard of, who then vanished from the photo right before my eyes.

My family insisted Leo was real, eagerly anticipating his arrival, but their stories about him were a chaotic mess of contradictions—tall, short, professor, contractor, living everywhere and nowhere. They had no photos, no contact info, nothing tangible.