The Camera Never Lies

by David Rawlings

  “There a problem, Daniel?” A menacing triumph rang in David’s voice.

  Daniel lifted folders and tilted photo frames while he swung frantic glances around his desk. “My camera was here a moment ago.”

  Sharon pointed to his desk. “Your phone is right there. Why not just use that?”

  Daniel stood back from his desk at a complete loss. Had Monique picked it up?

  David’s fingers rapped an angry tattoo on his armrest. “Just use your phone! I’ve got a job interview straight after this.”

  Daniel reached for his phone, defeated and angry. He held it up with a limp enthusiasm as Sharon offered another smile. David traded his scowl for a sarcastic grin.

  Daniel flopped into his chair as the couple looked to him to start their conversation. He threw surreptitious glances left and right—where was it? He had to get his head back in the game, and he blinked hard to reengage with the crumbling marriage in front of him. He shoved aside the confusion over the camera and grabbed a notepad, ready to save another marriage with no extra help.

  * * *

  “So that’s the best advice you’ve got? Open up? Hold no secrets?” David tapped an angry finger on his cheek as he slouched in his chair. “I could get that from ten minutes of watching Dr. Phil, and it would also save me a fortune.”

  Daniel was expecting this. Again the topic of David’s baggage had come up, and again he’d slammed the door shut on any discussion about it.

  David leaned forward, elbows perched on his knees, and sneered in Daniel’s direction. “She said you were a hotshot counselor with a bestselling book. Bestselling? Where did you get that information?”

  A crack scooted down Daniel’s self-control, and an ear-splitting shatter echoed in his head. “How dare you!”

  David sat stunned, not expecting his bait to be swallowed.

  The veins in Daniel’s neck throbbed as he pointed an angry finger at the man who was now retreating into his chair. “You come in here, full of righteous anger and unforgiveness you clearly enjoy, unwilling to accept any responsibility for your life. You reject the heartfelt apology from your wife and put her through extra hell while you force her to suffer the fallout from your inability to take responsibility for yourself.”

  Sharon blinked hard at Daniel. David’s chest resumed its heaving.

  Daniel eased away from his clients, trying desperately to screw a lid back on his famed self-control.

  Two words burst from David as he stood in a rush, and then he disappeared into the corridor in a huff.

  An apology formed on Daniel’s lips, but it hung there, unuttered, as Sharon burst into tears.

  “Thanks, I guess, for what I’ll be dealing with for the next week. I thought you could help us.” She gathered her handbag, sobs racking her body as she slunk from his office.

  The horror of his behavior numbed him, and he stared at the doorway. Daniel had never lost a client, but now that copybook was well and truly blotted.

  He heard a bright knock on his door. Monique appeared, balancing a steaming mug of coffee and a muffin the size of a bowling ball. “Have you got a moment to talk?”

  “Not now, Monique.”

  Her lower lip quivered. “I made this for you. I know how much great cooking means to you.” She placed her gifts on his desk and took a seat on the couch. “We need to talk.”

  Daniel clenched his jaw. “Now is not a good time.”

  She recrossed long legs. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Another wave of anger crested over him. He needed some space, some air. “Not at the moment.”

  She leaned forward, and a waft of Chanel drifted over to him. “I understand you, Daniel, and I can see you need to talk. Talk to me.”

  Daniel closed his eyes, his pulse pounding. “I said not now, Monique!” He opened his eyes to an empty sofa. Sobs filtered in from the corridor. What else could go wrong?

  The sobs were replaced by the ring of the practice switchboard. A second ring. A third. Monique never let it get to four. Another ring. Then a fifth.

  The light flashed impatiently on his phone. It was probably best if she didn’t take the call in the state she was in. He punched at the light. “Welcome to Crossroads Counseling. This is Daniel Whiteley.”

  The briefest hesitation. “Daniel? Amanda Porter. Are you answering your own phones nowadays?”

  Daniel forced a laugh, which he regretted in an instant. “I think I know why you’re calling.”

  A beat of silence on the other end of the conversation disagreed. “I’m not sure you do.” Amanda’s voice wasn’t serving its usual dollops of encouragement. It was flatter. Steelier. More knife than spoon.

  “You’re after the ideas for my next book, and it’s coming together a little slower than I wanted.”

  “I’m calling to request our advance back.”

  Daniel’s future rolled up in front of him like retracting blinds pulled too quickly. The house. His business. His reputation. His family.

  “We’ve reached that point now where we need to move on. In truth, we passed it a long time ago.”

  Daniel’s breathing grew ragged and shallow. “Can’t you give me a little more time? I think in another two weeks I’ll be able to—”

  “It’s been months. How will another two weeks help?”

  “You don’t understand. The advance has gone toward the house—”

  The steel in Amanda’s voice sharpened. “How you manage money is not our responsibility, but we are in the business of managing ours.”

  A heavy sigh. “I see.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Sometimes first-time authors stumble across a great idea but they can’t follow it up.”

  The anxiety of his unspoken secret blossomed into terrifying life. Handing back the advance meant he’d lose his house. If he came clean about No Secrets coming from Howard, he would lose a lot more than that. He signed off and cut the call.

  He saw movement in his office doorway. Anna slipped into his office and closed the door behind her. “We need to talk.”

  What now?

  She sat down heavily on Daniel’s couch and stared at the carpet, wringing her hands as if ordering her thoughts. “I’ll get straight to it. I’ve overheard everything this morning. The yelling match with your client. That conversation with your editor. What’s going on?”

  The idea of finding sweet relief in a shared burden toyed with him, but pride wouldn’t let the words come. As each second ticked away, he realized Anna was studying him from behind that raised eyebrow and analyzing his silence. Goodness knew he’d done the same thing enough times.

  He laced his fingers behind his head. “I’m behind on the deadline for my next book.”

  “By how much?”

  “Nearly twelve months.”

  Anna’s second eyebrow shot up to join the first. “Twelve months? How could you possibly be that far behind?”

  Her silence doled out enough rope for Daniel to either climb out of the hole he found himself in or hang himself. Ghosts of couples past chuckled as he got a taste of what it was like to sit in his office with someone else pulling the strings of the conversation.

  “It’s taking me longer than I first thought.”

  Daniel knew how the mechanics of silence worked, but now he appreciated why.

  “No kidding, but I don’t think you’re being honest with me.”

  Daniel wanted to fill the silence but was tackled by a sense of pride, unwilling to be cut down to size.

  Anna’s voice cracked as it rose. “Why won’t you tell me? Why is it so hard for a bestselling author to write another book?”

  He had to be honest with her, at the very least to release the pressure pounding inside his head. But that release came with a huge price. Several huge prices.

  “And what’s going on with your house?”

  At last, a question with an easy answer.

  “They want their advance back. That was our down payment, and without ano
ther book, we can’t keep it.”

  Anna’s brow furrowed, her silence extracting answers from Daniel. Answers he did not want to hear out loud. This had to end.

  “Anna, I can’t deal with this right now. Trust me, I’ll fix it.”

  The confusion on Anna’s face was at odds with her nod. “We also need to talk about Monique. She’s back at work, but she’s been erratic and rude with some clients. I’ve talked to her, and she’s planning to take stress leave. By the sound of her conversation with you, just in time.”

  Daniel breathed easier. At least one problem had an easy solution. “It’s probably best.”

  Anna drew in a sharp breath. “Is it, Daniel?” Her voice shook with a quiet rage. “Did you hear what I said? She’s taking stress leave. If it looks at all like you’re responsible, the practice will be on a legal hook if she pursues it. I can’t force you to do anything, but you need to do something. And now it’s more than for your own sake; it’s for all our sakes. Take a day off, clear your head, and sort things out. I’ll cover for you here. Go for a walk right now and take some photos with that camera Gramps gave you.” She nodded toward his desk.

  Daniel spun in his chair. Gramps’s camera sat next to the photo frames, its single, unblinking eye staring him down.

  Thirty-Two

  Kelly stared into her own eyes, eyes from an age ago. Eyes sparkling love in the present and hope in the future. On her young cheeks was a rosy sheen she hadn’t seen in some time, and her slender, wine-bottle neck swept down to a figure she’d spent too long trying to hide because she was convinced it wasn’t worth looking at. How wrong she was back then.

  But her eyes held the biggest change.

  Next to her in the wedding photo was a loving glance above a goofy grin from a tuxedoed Daniel, tall and proud. Neither of those traits had changed. They held hands in the sunset, and she saw the one thing she missed most. Connection.

  Kelly straightened their wedding photo and brought her living room back to order. Ruffled cushions arranged on the leather sofa. Magazines fanned on the coffee table. She tried to conjure happy memories, times when her dream home had delivered dreams.

  Memories of happier times trickled back. A four-year-old Milly telling her looping, interminable stories, keeping her parents in stitches with extra detail that required a reboot of the entire story with each addition. Providing the audience for a serious seven-year-old’s dance recital in a homemade newspaper crown. As the stories unfolded, the brush of her memory painted in the background. The sofa was brown velour, not gray leather. The room was small, not expansive with views to the ocean.

  The memories were not of this house.

  The happier times rolled on. Gramps’s eightieth birthday, Kelly’s Cajun dishes a hit. Milly’s squeals of delight, her tiny cheeks glowing from the candlelight on the teddy bear cake that had kept Kelly up until midnight.

  She looked across to the sparkling glass and gleaming silver of her expansive kitchen. These memories didn’t take place there. All her happiness had taken place somewhere else, somewhen else. Not now. Not here. Here was defined more and more by awkward silences, unfulfilled dreams, and Milly’s refusal to come out of her room.

  She had to be honest with Daniel.

  Leaving might put some distance between her and the pain of the present, but it wouldn’t return her to those times—times she would revisit in a heartbeat. And she didn’t want to leave. She had cried over coffee with Jasmine about the breakdown of her marriage and her family. Still, it was not a place she wanted to be. The thought of leaving had toyed with her in moments of frustration with her husband but had taken root when the first seeds of suspicion were planted. They were watered by the realization that the distance between them wasn’t busyness, that there might be more to it. When she felt the best way to win a debate with Daniel was to hold an unspoken one in her own head.

  But still the suspicion clung to her—unless she was clinging to it.

  Maybe Jasmine was right; she should just threaten to leave. But Simon’s point jabbed into her conscience. If she expected Daniel to be honest with her, she had to be honest with him—and with herself.

  She just had to pick the right moment to talk to Daniel.

  Her phone rang. Kelly looked across at the screen, hoping it wasn’t her husband. Not now, in the middle of these unordered thoughts. A sinking feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. The phone number was Milly’s school.

  “Mrs. Whiteley, Nicholas Rhodes from St. Arcadia’s Academy. How are you?”

  Milly’s principal. Kelly pumped energy into her end of the conversation to fight a rising dread. “Fine, thank you.”

  “Mrs. Whiteley—Kelly—I don’t like making calls like this, but it’s an important one to make. We have identified your daughter as being at risk. Milly blurted to her teacher that things are so bad at home she’ll need to do something drastic to get your attention.”

  Kelly jammed her eyes shut, horrified. At risk was bad enough. Your daughter made it so much worse.

  “It’s in Milly’s best interest for you to come in and talk with us.”

  Kelly fought hard to lasso her stampeding breathing. “Anything to help Milly talk would be good.”

  The principal gave a light chuckle. “Of course, I don’t need to tell your husband that. We have counselors here, but if you’d prefer to have that conversation with someone away from our school, I’m sure your husband knows someone who can help.”

  He did. Anna. But Kelly would not outsource mothering her daughter to Daniel’s work-wife.

  “Actually, how is Daniel? He missed our regular at-risk teens counseling session yesterday. I hope he’s okay.”

  Daniel never missed an appointment. Time slowed to molasses as she booked an appointment with her daughter’s school to intervene. To save her life. A failed mother, that’s what she felt like, and she was sick of feeling it.

  She needed to text Daniel with the time for the principal meeting. No, she’d talk to him about it. He could rearrange his schedule. Their daughter was suffering and acting out. Staying together for Milly’s sake wasn’t working. It was making her worse, and while Daniel could pretend to the outside world that everything was fine, maybe it would take something like this to get him to see someone. Now.

  And if he didn’t want to, there was only one thing left to do.

  Thirty-Three

  Daniel’s reflection stared back at him with a tired resignation. He should be anywhere but here. His first day off in three years, and a nagging thought had chipped away at him all night. And it had won.

  Daniel leaned on the glass door, and the tiny bell jingled his arrival. The film processor whirred and clunked in the back of the lab as the waft of chemicals drifted over the counter and grabbed him in an acrid grip.

  He noticed two new cameras on the shelf, each from a time before technology, each with a fluttering price tag. He checked his watch. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t in a hurry to be somewhere else, but this urgency was greater. Far greater.

  The eerie familiarity of one colorful photo in a mahogany frame drew him across the film lab in a rush. Was that Kelly’s suitcase? He stared hard. The tiles in his own foyer were unmistakable. The first bubble of anger bobbled its way to the surface. He hadn’t given Simon permission to put his family on display.

  Daniel shuffled along the frames, crouching and then standing on tiptoes, checking each for signs of a violation of his privacy. None of the photos were his. He reached a large pine frame just behind the counter and skidded to a halt. The frame was no longer empty.

  The tiny bell jingled as Simon entered, steam rising from the Chinese takeout container swinging from his fingers.

  Daniel’s pulse thudded in his ears as he thrust a quivering finger at the frame. “What do you call this?”

  Simon placed his lunch on the counter. “The honest truth.”

  Daniel breathed ragged and hard, seething anger sizzling as he rushed at Simon, grinding a finge
r hard into his chest. “You don’t have my permission to put a photo of my book up on display.”

  “Haven’t you built a business on the back of telling people to come clean with each other and hold no secrets?”

  White-hot flashes of rage and confusion clashed for control of Daniel. “I demand you take it down now!”

  “It’s not so easy when it’s you, is it? And you should know there’s only one way to get rid of it. Let me help you bring the life back to . . . well, your life.” Simon leaned into the savory steam that billowed from his lunch. “Mr. Ming’s steamed dim sims are to die for, aren’t they?”

  Molten anger spewed out of Daniel as he stomped over to the frame. He wrenched it from the wall and tore the photograph from it, crumpling it in his hand and letting it fall to the floor. “The only way, hey?”

  Simon gave a sad nod toward the frame in Daniel’s hands.

  At first there was a vibration in Daniel’s palms and then a hammering. The wood grew warm as the frame filled in with the sheer white of photographic paper. An invisible hand drew in the edges of a rectangular object and then detail. Words appeared in thick, black, chunky letters, and then a photo of a book, its title proud. But then the invisible hand stopped, not adding the author’s name.

  Daniel dropped the frame with a scream and sprinted to the door. He flung it open, mashing the tiny bell against the wall. Simon’s yell followed him into the street. “You need to face them, Daniel!”

  * * *

  Daniel’s tires crunched on the gravel of his driveway. Magical cameras that appeared at will. Photos that couldn’t be destroyed. He had to end this.

  He ran through the foyer and skidded to a stop as he entered the kitchen. Kelly leaned against the counter, inspecting Gramps’s camera as she turned it over in her hands.

  Daniel’s anger dizzied him. “So now you go through my stuff?”

  “My stuff? You left the camera out here on the kitchen counter.”

  No, I didn’t. “So you broke into Gramps’s briefcase.”

  “I don’t even know where the briefcase is. Daniel, I am telling you the truth. I came home, and the camera was sitting here.”