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1. The picture was snapped in late summer when the chill in the air already spoke of fall but the sun was still warm and hot on her skin. Mary was smiling in it and so was Dean. What caught the eye were the smiles on mother and son the same lopsided curve of the lips. The hair too was the exact color, both bleached by sunlight. It was September, 18th and Mary didn’t know she would die in less than two months, and in that moment in time, or even for that single, brief moment, life was beautiful. Life was exactly like she’d imagined it. (There had been a warning a few years before from a hunter that came out of nowhere. Mary, who hated hunters, had felt drawn to him for some reason she couldn’t tell so making a promise after his earnest request had been easy. The promise had been stolen from her by angels, though, and Mary didn’t remember it.)
2. The picture didn’t get burned in the fire. Mary had put all the pictures that had not made it to the family albums in a box in the basement a week before a demon came and killed her. It was by chance: she hadn’t planned the annual clean-up for that week, but she’d been restless and distracted and thinking of her parents and missing them and hating hunting even more than usual for taking them away too soon. Focusing on the boring task of emptying closets and cleaning up drawers helped her to calm. (She didn’t do it, but at some point she’d felt the strong need, like a compulsion, to salt all the windows and mark the house with the protections his mom had taught her.)
3. For twenty-two years the picture remained in the box on the top shelf in the basement of Mary’s house. The box was plain white; on the top, in big, black letters, the word ‘Winchester’. Jenny found it a month after she’d moved into the house. She was investigating the weird noises she kept hearing at night hoping to find a critter infestation. She spent about an hour going through the pictures. She’d been told about the fire and the family that had lived in the house so many years ago, and finally she could see their faces. It was a beautiful family: two sun-kissed children, a handsome husband, and a beautiful woman with a vague sadness in her eyes. Jenny knew that the woman had died so maybe she was projecting her feelings. (But she could see the mother in the older son when she first met him in her same sadness behind his smile. When Jenny gave him the box with the pictures, his solemn thank you made her feel like she was starting to repay these two motherless boys for having saved her family.)
4. It wasn’t Dean who chose the picture, but rather the other way around. It is rare, but objects in fact do things like that sometimes. He was going through the contents of the box outside the motel room after Sam fell asleep. And he was still restless with what had happened, burning with worry for Sam and these visions and hoping that John was there because he didn’t know what to do and he was so scared, he…. He was so sad with his mom’s memory and his mom’s face and wished for her touch, and wished for her soft lips on his forehead. The picture fell from his hand and floated to the ground close to his left foot. Dean took it and stared at the kid he’d once been and he stared at his mom’s and couldn’t remember when the picture had been snapped and neither could he remember when he’d been that kid. (But it was a beautiful picture and Dean did put it inside his wallet in the compartment behind his driving license. He didn’t know that, but the picture had been looking for a new home, bored of the dark inside a cardboard box. Dean’s wallet had not been the ideal, but it was an improvement and it would do for the moment.)
5. In the next few years, the picture survived three dives into the water – one into the freezing cold of a lake when Dean fell bloody and shot by his possessed brother. It survived two long trips through a hospital when, together with all Dean’s belonging it ended in a bag waiting on a shelf to be returned to its owner. The picture travelled all across the Country from town to town. It lay on the bedside tables of countless motel rooms; it visited hundreds of diners, many woods and cemeteries. It saw creatures of all kind, demons, and gods. It saw a lot of blood. When Dean died, it lived inside the blood-stained wallet for 4 months in the dark of the glove compartment. After the picture got back to Dean, it survived angels and demons and an averted apocalypse, and the quiet suburban life. Inside Dean’s wallet, it made a trip to heaven, and one, longer, to purgatory. (The picture didn’t know all these happenings, of course. It only knew that once in a while, Dean did take it out of the wallet from the small compartment behind Dean’s driving license for a few furtive moments and sometimes he talked to it and sometimes he asked questions the picture couldn’t answer and sometime he stared at it and said nothing.)
6. The picture wasn’t a very good picture. Sure the composition was good, although the background was a bit boring, and Mary looked breathtaking in it. But the camera used to snap it was a second-hand John Winchester had bought on a fire-sale. It was quite complex and John spent some time, and a few films, trying to learn how to use it. He was playing with the exposition counter when he saw Mary and Dean hugging on the porch laughing at something he didn’t hear. He pointed the camera and pressed the shutter without checking the settings because he didn’t want to lose the moment. (When printed, the picture came out over-exposed. It wasn’t as perfect as John had hoped and even though he liked it, it ended in a box and not in the family albums. That’s the only reason it was saved from the fire that burned the house, and Mary, on November, 2nd 1983.)
7. In its old age, finally, the picture left the small compartment of Dean’s wallet for one last time. It was the last thing Dean put on his new room, the last perfect touch and the single detail that made it his home. –