I pulled out a sandwich and handed the bag to Dad, then opted to sit on the ground at the opposite end of the alley. That way I didn’t have to listen to Princess Marisol bitch about the cheese being too cheesy or not eating mayo. Bonus: from where I was sitting, I could very faintly hear Vee’s singing. She’d moved on to something even more mournful. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a song to sound more mournful than “Black Daisy.”

After a few minutes, there was a scuffling of shoes. Dad was coming toward me. He held out my coffee. I took it and set it next to me. I really, really wanted that soda now.

“Can I join you?” he asked.

I scooted over to make the slightest amount of room and kept eating wordlessly. All morning I’d been watching and listening for numbers. Anything that might tip Dad’s hand as to what the code for that locked box might be. I noted the exact time that we got started, in case he started at the same time every session, or some weird superstition like that. I noted the serial numbers on his cameras and his tripod. I even noted the model number on the back of his car. Nothing seemed like it would be the one, but it was all I had.

“So what do you think?” he asked, groaning out the last couple of words as he lowered himself to the ground.

“Think about what?” I asked around a mouthful of sandwich.

“About this. You think you might want to follow in your parents’ footsteps?”

I almost choked. Which footsteps would those be? The ones where my mother hid her prostitution-borne baby, or the ones where he lied and hid whatever it was he had to do with it? I chewed extra slowly to give me time to measure my words. “I don’t know. I’m not very artistic.”

“You can learn that.”

“I don’t like to get up early.”

“Well, you’ll have to get over that, no matter what you choose.”

“I don’t like Marisol,” I said. I swallowed and ran my tongue over my front teeth, where a gummy piece of bread was stuck.

Dad glanced over his shoulder and then back at me. “Neither do I,” he said, and laughed. “You don’t have to be her best friend to take good pictures of her. Why don’t you try snapping a few when we’re done with lunch?”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re going to let me use your cameras? Those are your babies.”

“No, you’re my baby.” He shrugged. “I let your mother use them.”

“Mom was a photographer, too. She knew what she was doing.”