Our family group chat is called Fam ❤️. Five people. Me, Mom, Dad, my sister Zoe, my little brother Sam. Tonight my phone buzzed and the header said 6 members. The new one had no name. No profile photo. Just a gray circle. Mom: "who is this??" Three dots. Typing. Then it sent one photo. Our living room. The couch. Dad's mug on the coffee table, still steaming. Taken from inside the house.

Everyone was typing and deleting, typing and deleting. So I just asked. Me: "who are you" The reply came fast. Like it had been waiting for me specifically. "You know me." Me: "no i don't" It sent a second photo. My seventh birthday party, in our old kitchen. I remember that cake. There's a man standing behind seven-year-old me. I have never seen him before in my life.

Zoe: "that's photoshopped. it has to be." I zoomed in on the man. His face was a little wrong, like a photo of a photo. And he wasn't looking at the cake like everyone else. He was looking at whoever was holding the camera. Me: "who took this picture?" The gray circle: "You did." Me: "i was SEVEN" "You handed me the camera. You said, take one of all of us." I don't remember that. But we did lose a camera that year.

Sam: "wait. was it the silver camera?" Me: "how do you know that" Sam: "because it's in my closet. it was already there when we moved into this house. i thought it was dad's." He sent a picture of it. Old silver camera, dusty, a roll of film still inside. The gray circle answered before any of us could. "Don't develop the film." So obviously Dad drove us all to the one-hour photo place in the morning.