I loved the way the burned-out flashcubes of the Kodak Instamatic marked a moment that had passed, one that would now be gone forever except for a picture.

He would find his Susie,inside his young son. Give that love to the living.

In this deeply nuanced portrait of an American family, Bret Anthony Johnston fearlessly explores the truth behind a mythic happy ending. In Remember Me Like This, Johnston presents an incisive dismantling of an all-too-comforting fallacy: that in being found we are no longer lost.

Out loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that.

Please don't let Daddy die Susie," he whispered. "I need him.

I stared at her black hair. It was shiny like the promises in magazines.

I wake up very early in the morning. I like to start in the dark, and I never work at night, because my brain is evaporated by 4 p.m.