The
Mandela
Effect

     Jon looks down into his hands. The picture, a color Polaroid, surrounded by an elegant, white, porcelain frame; is of he and the woman who would have been his wife, had she survived.

     But somehow, inexplicably, here they were: he in a tuxedo; and she in the wedding dress that she never got to wear. The one he saw for the first time when he finally had the courage to clean out her closet. 

     The two of them, dressed as bride and groom, cutting a wedding cake. Looking closely, beyond the smiles, and the dress, and the setting; there, on their third fingers, matching wedding bands. The same bands Jon now had in a safe deposit box in a bank in Chicago.

      Jon would have remembered this picture. He would have remembered this day. Somehow, his grandmother had a physical picture that could never have been taken.