The day after Janelle got out of college for the summer, she took her 13 year old sister Janae to the park to catch up and take pictures. It was beautiful outside. Nice and sunny. They talked, ate ice cream, and then took pictures.
While Janae was taking a picture of Janelle, she noticed something beautiful in the background. Behind Janelle, the clouds were open and sunlight was shining through. “What?” Janelle asked watching her sister’s facial expression.
“The Heavens are open,” said Janae and she pointed up toward the sky.
“It’s beautiful,” said Janelle. “Get a picture of it.”
“Got it. Let’s see what we got so far.” They walked over to a big oak tree and sat under it facing where the Heaven’s opened. Going through the pictures, Janelle noticed a man, dressed in white, in the background of every picture they had taken except two. She recognized him, but couldn’t place his face. He was standing under the clouds were the Heavens were opened and sunlight cast on him perfectly. “Janae?”
“Yea?”
“Who is this man in the background of all our pictures?”
“What? Let me see.” Janelle gave her sister the camera so she could see. Janae looked at the pictures. “I have no idea.”
“Did you see him at all while you were taking the pictures?”
“No.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Maybe we just didn’t notice him,” said Janae. But even when she said, she knew that something was up.
“I think it’s ironic how we never saw him but he’s in almost all the pictures. Wait, zoom in.” Janae zoomed in and Janelle noticed something was around his neck. There was a dog tag with a picture of two little girls on it. She recognized the picture instantly. She reached into her bag and pulled out her wallet.
Janae watched Janelle and waited on a hint of what her sister was thinking. “What?” asked Janae.
Janelle didn’t reply. She just pulled out the picture she had been looking for. She stared at it. “It can’t be—” she said under her breath.
“What? What is it?” asked Janae getting impatient.
In her hands, Janelle was holding a picture of her and Janae when they were babies. It looked exactly as the picture on the man’s dog tag. The only difference was, the picture from the wallet had her father and mother in it. Her mother was alive and well, but her father had died a month after Janae was born. Janelle had only been 5 years old. He was driving home when an 18 wheeler ran a red light and hit him on the driver’s side. The thing was that the guy in the picture from the wallet looked exactly like the guy in the recent pictures they had taken.
Janelle didn’t say any of this out loud. She was afraid that she was losing her mind. Janae took the picture from her. “This man looks exactly like our dad,” Janae said looking up at Janelle.
“Uh-huh.” That was all Janelle could manage to say.
“But our dad died from a car accident when I was a month old.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, what do we do now?”
Janelle looked up at her and said, “I guess we keep taking pictures.”