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Back The Camera Never Lies Save as PDF
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Epigraph
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Forty-Four
  47. Forty-Five
  48. Epilogue
  49. A Note from the Author
  50. Discussion Questions
  51. Acknowledgments
  52. About the Author
  53. Acclaim for David Rawlings
  54. Also by David Rawlings

Daniel stared harder at the plastic under Kelly’s fingers. Why would she be holding a bottle of pills at Milly’s birthday party? Something was up. He’d spent enough time sitting five feet from people who tried—and failed—to hide things from their partner and his probing questions. He’d have to ask her what was going on. Again. He hoped it would go better this time.

The stiff spine creaked as Daniel reached the final photo, only halfway through this strange album. Another familiar face. Milly sat on a chair in the corner of their living room in her new dress, which she had spent hours choosing to match the pink-and-white theme she’d set for her twelfth birthday party. Her eyes lowered, hands clasped on her lap, the camera flash catching the trickle of a tear down her cheek.

This time embarrassment didn’t flood through Daniel. It was guilt. Their rush to cater to everyone else at the party meant he didn’t notice Milly at all, and he should have. The pulse of his family had quickened because of their busyness, but it had not brought life.

He looked up at Milly, still head down over her device in an almost mirror image of the photo he held in his hand. Daniel sighed hard. It was another reminder that for all the families he’d saved as a counselor, his own was in danger of falling apart.

Two

The traffic ahead of Kelly smeared into a kaleidoscope of taillights and vague color on bumpers.

Tears will do that.

Kelly drummed them away to music on the steering wheel as she drove from the funeral. Away from her family. She had ten minutes until she called on a new children’s clinic and rolled out the usual spiel about the wonder drug ridding families of frustration all over the city. She should be home, not going back to work after a funeral. But this was one more time when the choice was taken from her. As she shot through traffic, Kelly checked the rearview mirror and tried a smile. Sadness still lurked. That would have to go. You only got one chance to make a good first impression, and that didn’t happen with red, puffy eyes.

Gramps’s passing would leave a big hole in her life. A caring man with a kind word to say—and he always knew the right time to say it. He was almost her grandfather, too, and he was the one who could get through to Daniel.

The next song from the radio eased into the car—plaintive piano chords in a careful tread over rising violins. The tears crept forward, and Kelly punched for another station. Jagged synth chords backed with the attitude of an all-girl group banished her tears with a finger snap.