The girl points over the table to her sister. “We share,” she says. “She reads. I listen. She says I read too slow.”

“You’ll get faster.” Nolan laughs as he rises from his chair to slide onto folded knees next to the little girl. “Can you see now?”

She looks hard at his face and twists her mouth, pointing a chubby finger back at her sister. “Jennifer thinks you’re cute.”

Nolan blinks in a way that makes me think he wants to scoot this little girl back to her side of the table, but she plows on.

“What happens to Emmeline and Ainsley? Jennifer says if we were in Orman she would feed me to the sirens to get some quiet, but that doesn’t happen, right?”

“Julie,” the red-faced older sister warns as she hands Nolan a pristine copy of his second book. “Let Mr. Endsley sign our book so he can meet the other people, okay?”

But little Julie will not be deterred, and I’m starting to think this will end in a tantrum—Julie’s or Nolan’s—when Nolan cups his hand around Julie’s ear.

As he whispers, Julie’s face glows, the sun peeking through clouds after days of rain. They sit this way for at least a minute, and it takes a curious glance from Jennifer to remind me of my role as event photographer. I snap a picture of this pilfered moment in the grass.

Nolan and Julie melt away. Inside the lens, they shift, and Nolan whispers to another little girl, one that shares his dark waves and seafoam eyes, and he’s an older brother revealing the location of the hidden holiday gifts.

Nolan doesn’t see this little girl as Ainsley of Orman. To him, she is Avery Endsley.

There is a very good chance that this exact photo exists somewhere else in the world, with these players in these poses, but it’s this context that makes it special. It’s because it is Nolan and Julie in the damp grass while quiet Jennifer looks on that makes the photo worth taking at all.

As Nolan pulls away to sign the book, I break my rule and take three photos in quick succession. I can’t resist capturing all the moments of Julie spelling her name aloud while Jennifer shyly gazes at Nolan. The photos are no less real or special for being one of many.

There’s no time to ask Nolan what he whispered to Julie. The line of people is getting restless. He signs for what feels like hours more, and even though he’s strained from interacting with this many people, he handles it well. Since the sisters left, the squint between his eyes has eased.