With one hand on the splintered banister, Clare swallowed her hurt, her fear, somehow even her pride, and started up the stairs to Adam’s room. On the wall next to her, the familiar collage of framed school photos of Adam and Kaylee stared back at her—their baby-toothed kindergarten grins all the way through to, up here at the very top of the stairs, their senior portraits. Both of them beautiful, well dressed, posed by a professional photographer outside on a rustic bridge. Not believing anyone in town was capable of capturing this seminal moment to match her exacting expectations, Mrs. Collins had driven Adam and Kaylee down to Cheyenne for the photo session.

On the last step, delaying the mortification of begging Adam for forgiveness, Clare stared at the pictures of them both.

Eileen had taken her senior picture—and actually Clare thought that her sister had done a much better job than Mrs. Collins’s professional. Not because of Clare as the subject, no, but because Eileen had an amazing talent, an eye for setting up a shot. Capturing the light, an expression, an exacting tilt of the head, and she always chose the most beautiful locations for her pictures—even if the beauty was not the obvious kind.

Clare’s senior picture had been taken in the brick planter in front of the Natrona County Library with the bronze statue of an upside down Prometheus giving the gift of fire to humans. Despite the architectural attempt to spice up the front with a concave cement facade, the library would be nobody’s obvious choice for a senior photo. Except it made perfect sense to Eileen when thinking of where to pose her sister. Aside from school and their own house, the public library had been the setting for their childhood. It was always safe, warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and so long as they kept their voices down and didn’t mess around, the librarians would let them stay as long as they wanted. When they had been little, and their mother was on duty, and their father too unpredictably frightening to be around, the library was their first choice whenever it was open. Probably other people wouldn’t understand Clare’s senior picture, but to Clare and her sister, it was the perfect spot.