legends · 6 min read ·
Sync Failed
A shared family photo album begins to receive pictures from a kitchen that no one in the family has ever lived in.
The family album had been shared with everyone since 2016, which meant Dana Oyelaran had forty-one relatives who could add photos, and only one who ever did. That was her cousin Imke, who lived in Germany and posted pictures of bread.
On the first Sunday in March, a new photo appeared from an account nobody recognized.
*Uploaded by: Brynn*
*Location: Haley*
*Taken: 14 years ago*
Dana had never heard the name Haley.
The photo was a kitchen. Yellow cabinets. A window over the sink with a plant on the sill. A pharmacy calendar from a chain that had closed before Dana finished college. A plate on the table with a single fork laid beside it.
*Caption: Mom's last Thanksgiving. Nobody came. Still set a place.*
She scrolled. The next photo showed the same kitchen from a different angle. The plant was gone from the sill. The calendar showed another month. A chair had been pulled out, and over its back hung a man's canvas work coat with a torn pocket.
Dana knew that coat. Her father had worn it until the week he died. Her mother had given it to the church, and Dana had driven it there herself and left it on a folding table between two coffee urns.
*Caption: He said he'd be back for the coat. He's always late.*
She was sitting on the edge of her bed with the laptop on her knees. The house was quiet in the way a house is quiet when two people are asleep down the hall. She told herself someone had reused a stock photo, the way people do.
She refreshed the album. The newest upload was a photo of her own kitchen.
It had been taken from the doorway between the dining room and the hall, at about the height of a seated person's eyes. The vinyl tablecloth she'd bought at the discount store. The bowl of clementines by the bread box. The dishwasher door hanging open because the latch had been broken since August.
Her sister Ada stood at the counter, back to the camera. Her hair was in the lopsided braid Dana had done that morning, because Ada's wrist was still in a cast.
*Taken: 2 days ago.*
*Caption: She won't stop talking about the other house. She says the other kitchen is nicer. Please tell her it isn't.*
Dana did not believe in a lot of things. She believed in the sound the dishwasher made when the latch failed, and in the weight of her husband's arm across her stomach. She did not believe the photograph had been taken two days ago. Ada had not been in the kitchen two days ago; she had been at the hospital for her wrist. Dana had been in the kitchen two days ago, and she had been alone, and she remembered the clementines because she had peeled one standing at the counter with her back to the doorway.
She put the laptop down and went down the hall. Ada's door was open. Ada lay on top of the blanket, one arm hanging over the side, the braid still in her hair.
Dana went down the stairs quietly, the way you do past sleeping people, one hand on the banister. The wood was cool. On the fourth step from the bottom it creaked, and she heard, very faintly, from the kitchen, someone else take the same step in the same place a half-second later.
She stopped. The kitchen light was on.
She stood in the hall and looked through the open doorway at the table. The bowl of clementines was full. The table had been set for three. A plate with a single fork sat at the place nearest the window, and the chair there had been pulled out, and over its back hung a canvas coat with a torn pocket.
She didn't go in. From where she stood she could see the window, the sill, the plant that wasn't there in the photo but was in the room. Her own phone buzzed in her hand.
*Brynn added 1 photo to Oyelaran Family Album.*
The photo was taken from the stairs, looking down. It showed the hallway where Dana was standing, from exactly the height of a grown man's eyes, which meant it had been taken from somewhere she had just come down. In it, a woman in a dark cardigan stood at the bottom of the stairs with her face turned toward the camera. The face was blurred, as if someone had pressed a thumb over the lens. Dana could still see the mouth. It was her own.
*Taken: now.*
She looked up. The hall was empty. The kitchen light was still on.
Her husband came down the stairs behind her. She heard him stop on the fourth step, the creak, and then heard him stop breathing.
"That's Dad's coat," he said, very quietly.
Neither of them went closer.
· · ·
The sync failed at ten past four. The album showed the standard error:
*Could not sync. Some items may not appear on all devices.*
She tried again. The error came back. Each attempt took a little longer to fail, as though the connection had to cross more distance each time.
By dawn the album held three hundred and twelve photos, all from Haley. None were from the family's own collection. The newest showed the kitchen in clean morning light, the plant back on the sill, the place setting at the window complete, a glass of water beside the plate with a faint ring on the table where it had been sitting.
*Caption: She's keeping her room for her.*
Dana climbed the stairs to Ada's room. The blanket was folded on the pillow. Her sister's braid lay beside it, the elastic still in place, the strands lying side by side as if someone had taken them out carefully, one by one, and put them down.
Dana's phone buzzed one last time.
It was a photo of Ada, sitting at the window of the other kitchen, a canvas coat around her shoulders and her hands folded on the table. She was smiling, and she looked like she had always been there.
*Taken: just now.*
Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. Her husband's footsteps crossed the hall and paused at the foot of the stairs, a half-second before he would have reached the fourth step. Then they went on, unhurried, toward the kitchen, where the light had been left on, and where the chair at the window was pulled out for someone to sit down.
Dana looked at the braid on the pillow for a long time. She did not write a caption. She could not think of one that would be true.