Chapters (54)
- Cover
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Epilogue
- A Note from the Author
- Discussion Questions
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Acclaim for David Rawlings
- Also by David Rawlings
Kelly closed her eyes. “I’m not sure how much longer I can hang on. And Milly needs me now.” She opened her eyes to Daniel’s pursed lips. Those knitted brows.
“But if you quit now, we could lose the house and everything we’ve been working toward. I’m trying as hard as I can.”
In that moment, Kelly saw the husband she once knew, not one head down and charging ahead but one without all the answers. “It’s nice to talk again. We used to talk about everything. What happened to those days?”
“It happens to a lot of couples when they get busy or hit this stage in life. It’s normal.”
“Is that what you say to the couples you work with? Things are normal?”
The question was innocent enough as it left Kelly’s lips, but it seemed to reach Daniel’s ears with a pointed intent. He dropped his eyes and strode toward his study, head down, back to his regular distance.
Kelly grabbed the knife. The tears came back as she chopped again at the already chopped onions. She would love to go back to those happier days when the world was in front of them and they were tackling it together rather than it squeezing in on them and pushing them apart. Jasmine’s comment burrowed in deeper under her skin as thoughts she never imagined possible danced around her. Keeping open an empty account at a strange bank. Leaving the man she’d promised to love forever. Returning to their early days would be impossible, but she could force better days ahead.
What would life be like if I left? A daydream scrolled across her mind, one in which she packed her suitcase and threw it in the back of the car, and then drove away from all this baggage.
Nine
The tiny bell jingled, and the waft of chemicals again pinched Daniel’s nose. The smell of something developing.
On a small sign sitting on the unattended counter, a smiling cartoon camera checked its oversized wristwatch: “Back in a minute!” Another relic from another time.
At the back of the lab, a white-and-blue behemoth of right angles and metal took up half the floor space with a gentle hum and occasional clicks. Another relic, from a time when the larger the technology, the more its sophistication.
Daniel made his way to the shelves, drawn in by a wooden box, concertinaed leather separating rich mahogany. The camera sat in the shelf’s center, its thick lens beaming like a cyclops. A burnished gold plaque on the front carried the proud name of its maker: Cameo 1915. This camera was more than a hundred years old but somehow also new. A tiny white square hung from a cotton thread tied to a wooden arm. Daniel gave a low whistle at the handwritten price—$10,000 or W.I.N. These old cameras were valuable. And those initials must represent a photographic term.