by Lisa Preston
“May I?” she asked. Mario nodded, looking complimented, so she snapped him first, snapped the shop, then turned to Alex, who inclined his chin and looked away, posing in a shaft of sunlight from the far window. She caught his profile, noting his right ear was pierced. She was dying to see if his left ear was also pierced and ached to get to the heart of the photo from the antique camera, to cut her teeth in photojournalism with actual journalism.
She pulled the relic from her bag, unwinding the leather strap, opening the case, flipping up the viewfinder, and releasing the bellows. “Have you seen this camera before?”
Mario raised one eyebrow. Alex cocked his head and nodded, eyeing the camera like an old acquaintance, one he had history with. Don’t read into things, she told herself. She wondered if the old photograph was a positive or a negative thing, if she was bringing up bad memories or something long forgotten. Well, it must be forgotten for an undeveloped photo to sit in a camera for decades.
Let the image speak, she told herself when she failed to think what to say. She took a breath, pulled an oversize white envelope from her bag, and unsheathed the large black and white photograph, slipping it to the table between her and Alex, the stiff paper oriented so both had to turn their heads slightly to see it right side up.
It had been the first shot on the reel, the most protected, with the rest of the film wound around it. Why hadn’t the rest of the film been shot?
She sensed Mario eyeing her, the unmoving older man, and the photo. She watched Alex. Stiff, stiff Alex, with the frozen face and hands suddenly like claws as they withdrew to rest far back on his hips, almost behind his back. He did not swallow or gulp, didn’t seem to breathe. He didn’t ask, not anything, not where the photo came from or why she was showing it to him or what did she want with him. He looked with an unfocused gaze to the middle ground, neither at Gillian nor at Mario, who was leaning in with curiosity, brow furrowed as he looked at the photo. And finally, Alex flicked a glance sideways to the door, the front windows. When he looked back, Alexandru Istok swallowed and forced another glance at what lay on the table. He pointed to the young man on the left end of the photo. “That is me.”
If he’s in the picture … Gillian mulled. “Who took this photograph?”
“My sister. She was that way, like a woman even as a girl, making over things. She found a camera. ‘Let’s take a picture,’ she said. That was what she wanted.”
Gillian smiled in spite of herself, enjoying the meter of his speech. But a mental groan echoed through her brain with the new problem. Now there was a different consideration of photographic copyright. Was his sister dead? Was he her heir? Even if the shot was taken on Alexandru Istok’s camera, the photo was not his if he wasn’t the shooter. Permission for reprinting had just become more difficult.
“Do you recall what year this picture was taken?”
“Nineteen forty-four.”
Her breath caught. The war wasn’t over.
Alex shook his head, his eyes misty. “I thought no one remembers those times. No one remembers an old bow maker.”
She considered the photo again. Kids standing shoulder to shoulder in a line. On either end were the oldest of the boys, but it was so hard to guess their ages. Twenty? Twelve? Something in-between. Gillian stared at each face and body, for so long her eyes misted, then dried, and she blinked furiously to restore her contact lenses. They were people with possibility, with promise. They had fulfilled that cachet or not, to varying degrees. Undoubtedly, most were dead, but they’d all had potential, all might lead her somewhere, give her a vicarious breath of new life. A legacy.
Alex let his breath out slowly, rubbed his forehead, and did not meet her gaze. “How have you come to have this? Why? Why now?”
She watched him massage a distended vein in his temple. No, not a vein—the regular thumping in the knotty cord under the skin signaled an artery. Gillian forced her gaze more directly to his eyes. “I developed it from that old camera, which was recently given to me.”
His shoulders started to slump, then froze, as though not allowing himself the luxury of defeat. He rotated the photograph back to her and she faced it, an eight-by-ten landscape framing six boys in the woods.
She smiled up at him. He seemed catatonic. “Mr. Istok? Alexandru? Alex?”
His lips parted, but he was mute. Perhaps his eyes watered. He stared without blinking, then looked away, then back again, and ran a hand over his head.
“Where was this photo taken?”
“Romania. We were in Romania again by then.”
“These children, who are they?”
“They are Jews. Orphans.” He pointed at the picture and stepped back. “We were all orphans then.”
Her hand went to her mouth and her eye half-closed in sympathy. Those children had already been tugging on her heart. Orphans. “What were you doing? What happened to everybody?”
“I got them out. Delivered them.”
This, Gillian thought, is it. She stared at the photo, reveling in the thought of the children’s rescue. She turned the print on the table so that it again faced the old man.
Alexandru Istok looked straight at Gillian and, with a quick flip of his wrist, turned the photograph over, slapping it facedown.
CHAPTER 11
Emma accepted the small brown paper sack her brother’s boyfriend dispensed as a new piece of standard equipment for every adult in the Donner family.
“The problem,” Ryan explained, “is a lack of carbon dioxide. What happens when Greer hyperventilates is, he doesn’t have enough carbon dioxide in his system. That insufficiency causes the tingling in his fingertips and lips. The tingling and numbness feels weird, makes him more anxious, he hyperventilates even more, and if he keeps blowing off all of his carbon dioxide, he passes out. With the bag over his nose and mouth, we let him breathe in his own exhaled carbon dioxide, which rebalances his blood chemistry.”
Emma frowned as she tucked the bag into her hip pocket. She was at the folks’ house early because her mom got Frankie to promise a quick visit home before he jetted back to LA, and Ryan was to explain this hyperventilating business to all the adult kids.
They had quizzed Greer hard after the first episode, when Bella called the ambulance, terrified that he really couldn’t breathe. Within days, he’d panted to the point of making himself black out again. She’d heard about Greer acting up lately and her mom’s frustration with no good answers.
“But why does he do it?” Emma asked. “Why does he hyperventilate?”
Ryan’s response, “He’s gotten excited about something, that’s all,” did nothing to erase Emma’s frown. She heard that her littlest brother only mumbled and shrugged, seeming to accept this new problem of hyperventilation. Her mom left the table where she’d been sipping coffee in silence and pushed into the kitchen.
Emma lowered her voice. “Mom said that Dad asked you and Ben to talk to Greer.”
“He asked me what happens when people die. Look, I’ve got to get to work. You two can tell Frankie what I told you about using the paper bag to correct the effects of hyperventilation, right?”
Emma nodded, thinking.
“’Bye, Em, ’bye, Bella.” Ryan gave Emma’s shoulder a squeeze and blew a kiss toward the kitchen. Bella came out for a proper hug before letting him out the door.
Emma could hear her dad and Greer back from feeding the horses, their voices mingling with Ryan’s. They’d make the guy late for work.
She soaked in the peace. It still felt like home, this rambling country house on a hillside that looked across the pastures, woods, and the strait. They’d all grown up here, except for the very early years in the cabin, which only Ben and Clara remembered. This home was a perfect place for Greer to grow up.
“What’s Dad say about Greer?” Emma was the one who started calling her parents Mom and Dad instead of the Momma and Papa names they’d grown up using. She’d hoped Clara would too, being the big-city lawyer, but Clara seemed t
o like the country clash. Or maybe she just could not follow Emma on anything. Ben and Frankie did join Emma in calling the folks Mom and Dad and Doug sometimes did, too.
“He says Greer’s having a bad patch. He says all Donner men have them.”
“Not Doug,” Emma said, because her junior year of high school, when Doug had fought their dad most nights, didn’t count. Doug could move his mind first and farthest and he stuck to what he believed was right.
“No, I guess not,” her mom agreed.
They both looked outside where Frankie had just arrived, late as usual, and Ryan was trying to leave. Both guys were shaking hands with Ardy, around Greer who had packed himself in the middle of the men. She heard her dad ask if Frankie had a safe trip.
“And the doctor isn’t too worried about this hyperventilation thing?” Emma knew her mom had taken the kid to more than a few appointments.
“Oh …” Bella’s exasperation came with a mighty exhalation. “I’ve talked to the family doc and the pediatrician and the school nurse. I want to get that boy squared away. He’s had diarrhea and the clinic found nothing wrong with him. We’ve done allergy testing, too. Nothing, no answers.”
“Allergies?”
Bella lowered her voice. They could hear the guys on the front porch now, talking. “I’ve gotten a referral to a psychiatrist even though everyone says there’s nothing wrong with him. They gave me a giant questionnaire to start off with and it all feels wrong. I’m dreading the appointment.”
“Maybe nothing’s wrong with him,” Emma said. “Why are you so sure something is?”
“He’s just different. He’s like a bundle of stress. Like he worries, and he never used to worry.”
“What’s he worried about?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t say he’s worried, that’s just what I think. It’s like he’s fretting. He has the hardest time getting up in the morning even though I put him to bed early. His teacher says he falls asleep in class.”
“So he’s not sleeping,” Emma said. “Don’t lots of kids go through a nightmare phase?”
“Not my kids,” Bella said.
Not while we were asleep, Emma thought. Greer was all right, really. The family would pull him through this little rough spot. He was eight. What real problems could he possibly have? She rose and closed the box of pastries she’d brought. Ryan had scarfed up two of the three jelly puffs, and she wanted to save one for Frankie.
Bella, hands on her hips, wasn’t done. “His schoolwork has crashed. His answers on an English test last week were just scrawls and he left most of a math quiz blank.”
“He earned good grades the first quarter. He showed me.” Emma defended the youngest best, unwilling to hear her baby brother get dumped on. She didn’t want her parents’ expectations set too high. “Isn’t it okay if he’s not a stellar student?”
“He’s not even a substellar student. He’s carrying Ds and Fs at this point. Emma, last week he was suspended for a day.”
“Suspended?”
Bella nodded. “I get a call. ‘Mrs. Donner, we need you to come pick up your son.’ ‘Is he sick?’ ‘No.’ ‘Was he fighting?’ ‘No. It’s a language offense,’ they say. And he’s out of school for the rest of the week for making threats.”
Emma was stunned. “Threats?”
Bella nodded, her mouth a grim line. “Greer tripped. His teacher says he trips and drops things a lot lately. Anyway, he tripped and fell and another boy laughed at him and Greer got mad, enraged is the way his behavior was described by the PE teacher who saw the incident. Greer told the boy who was laughing that he’d, quote, ‘Shoot the boy’s entire family.’”
“Wow.”
“Yes, wow. And I cannot imagine why my recently rotten son would say something like that. I had no words. ‘That is one irritable little boy,’ his teacher says. Mandatory meeting with the school counselor and Greer only says he’s sorry and he doesn’t know why he said it.”
“Wow.” Amazement pitched Emma’s voice high.
“Hey, all.” Frankie burst in the door with his characteristic limp, roughing up a smiling Greer, who swung back, half-hitting, half-hugging, playing as well with Ardy, who swatted his boys, man and child, inside.
“Come here, punk,” Emma said to Greer, her arms wide. He grinned and bear-hugged her, beaming.
“Coffee?” Bella offered after exchanging cheek kisses with Frankie.
He held up a hand as he nodded. “I’ll get it, Mom.” But Bella was already through the swinging doors, Ardy following, reaching for her waist.
Emma could hear them getting it on, having kiss time in the kitchen. Really. She hugged Frankie with unassuming affection. By the family rule, she’d been his keeper, the one assigned to watch over him. They both lived in Seattle now, but hardly ever managed to see one another—not to mention Clara and Wes—except when they came to the folks’ place. Yet Frankie was her favorite. After his childhood tractor accident, she held him apart, wracked by guilt. But he’d never held the wreck against her, not even when it became clear he’d been maimed for life. You’re only a year older, Em. You weren’t responsible for me.
She beamed as Frankie reached for the last jelly puff. Greer beat him to it. Frankie screamed in fake horror. “Brilliant. I’m going to have to kill you now, small fry.”
The disturbed look plastered across Greer’s face was beyond creepy. Emma shook his shoulder. “Greer, you know no one really means it when they say that.”
“If people don’t mean it …” the boy said, but didn’t finish the thought. He stared at the wall across the room, rapt, his mouth hanging open.
“Yo! Monkey boy.” Frankie waved his hands in front of his little brother’s face. “You know that as the one next up from you in the age chain, I’m your primary protector?”
Greer nodded. “I protect everybody.”
Emma snorted as Frankie got good and tuned up, ready to wax on.
“Well, punk, that means I’m also the one who’s allowed to thump on you.” Frankie eyed the last of the powdery puff pie in Greer’s hand.
“But you’re not hardly ever here.” The boy twisted his mouth, looking pouty and his voice slowed. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad for everyone to be scattered all over. How do you know if everyone’s okay?”
Was it bugging the little guy that Frankie was leaving on another road trip of guitar gigs?
Ardy was there, a hand on his youngest son’s shoulder. “I make sure everyone’s okay. That’s my job ’cause I’m the daddy. I’ll always take care of you.”
“Maybe we should all go away with Frankie,” Greer said to four perplexed adults.
Doug called that afternoon to say he couldn’t stay, but he’d had a good day and would bring their main course. Emma knew what that meant and put dibs on cooking. Her mom would have fried the fish, but Emma pictured crusting the trout or salmon with pecans and parmesan under the broiler. In her Seattle bistro job, she only got to prep and plate.
She thought and dreamed again about the little apartment over the local bakery and coffee shop. She didn’t want to turn thirty crashing at her parents’ place on the days she came back from the city. And she didn’t want two lives, two jobs, two homes. The coffee shop was dying because the owner didn’t implement a modern attitude. Keep up the Wi-Fi. Let the high school kids loiter there. Put cardamom in some coffee. Do soup, sandwiches, and salad so the lunch and dinner crowd could come. Be Panera in the country. Offer Emma’s killer gluten-free recipes, her crustless quiche, her chocolate bark that didn’t spike an insulin response because she had experimented so carefully with stevia. She crafted grain-free treats that won raves. She did things with coconut palm sugar. Imagine a steady trade of special orders, making the best wedding cakes on the peninsula.
Of course, Caroline had agreed, we’d be honored for you to make our cake.
This was a debut, an opportunity to make the most of. What if she flipped her life again? What if instead of roommating in the city a
nd supplementing her sous-cheffing with the coffee-shop-cum-patisserie country job, she went all the way with the latter? She’d be clear of all that irregularity the demands of her double life implied. No more commuting two hours one way. The coffee shop had faltered for years under the current owner. Emma’s time there provided a much-needed boost, but it wasn’t boosting her.
There was a man in the city she saw, one she needed to stop seeing. She could leave. She could come back to the hometown for good, making her own way if only she were brave enough to get a loan.
“We’re going to lie down for a nap,” Bella said.
Emma looked up from her daydream. They’d lazed away the morning in companionable quiet, visiting occasionally, reading, puttering.
“You, too, Greer.” Ardy steered his youngest down the hallway ahead of them.
“But Emma’s here,” the boy protested.
“She’ll still be here. Just an hour or so nap, buddy.”
This was new. Emma raised an eyebrow but said nothing as her parents and baby brother headed down the hallway.
Maybe someday … a good guy. Maybe kids?
Come late afternoon, Emma threw the door open as Doug arrived with a stringer of fresh rainbow trout.
“Hey you,” he said. “You didn’t bring any of those cinnamon rolls, did you? I’d be a big hero to Maddie if I brought some of those home.”
Emma shook her head. “No such luck. I’m hardly there anymore and I think it’s hardly open. The dinosaur cut the hours again.”
“Who?”
“The coffee shop owner, Doug.”
“Wish you’d take the place over,” he said.
This brother of hers had always been able to find the bone. Emma kept her counsel, but felt a thrum in her core. She could do it.
“Doug!” Greer rushed into the living room, but his excitement at the arrival was cut off by a gasp.
Emma watched her baby brother stare at the fish. Then Greer melted. He plunked on his butt and covered his head with his arms.