Chương 2
Claire hates photographs where people touch her waist.
Then another.
She always steps away.
Then another.
She didn’t step away from him.
Daniel bent and picked up his jacket.
He shook imaginary dust from one sleeve.
“Cancel the headshots.”
“Daniel—”
“Please.”
Maya nodded.
“I’ll refund the deposit.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“I think it is.”
He looked toward the gray backdrop where the assistant was pretending to adjust a cable.
“Can I have five minutes somewhere?”
Maya pointed toward a narrow office behind a partition.
“Of course.”
Daniel walked into it and closed the door.
There was a desk, two folding chairs, a shelf full of camera batteries, and a framed photograph of a golden retriever wearing sunglasses.
He sat.
Then stood.
Then sat again.
He took out his phone.
Claire’s name remained pinned at the top of his messages.
The last message from her had arrived at nine forty-one.
Made it. Conference registration is chaos. Call tonight?
Daniel opened the photograph she had sent from the supposed airport.
The coffee cup sat beside a tall window. Beyond it was gray pavement and the tail of what looked like an airplane.
He enlarged the image.
Then enlarged it again.
Nothing obvious.
He searched the metadata, though he knew most messaging apps stripped useful location information.
Nothing.
His thumb hovered over her number.
He could call her.
He could demand an explanation.
He could accuse.
He could tell himself there had to be some impossible arrangement that made all of this reasonable.
Instead, he opened their shared calendar.
Claire had blocked Thursday through Saturday.
Midwest Education Leadership Conference.
She worked as director of community partnerships for a nonprofit education foundation in Chicago. Travel was common enough that Daniel had stopped memorizing the names of conferences.
He searched his email for the itinerary she had forwarded.
United flight 1774.
Departure, 8:05 a.m.
Chicago O’Hare to Milwaukee.
Daniel stared at it.
Chicago to Milwaukee was a short flight, unusual but not impossible.
He opened the airline app.
He did not have Claire’s boarding pass. Of course he didn’t.
He searched the flight number online.
The flight existed.
That did not mean Claire had been on it.
A knock came at the office door.
Maya opened it halfway.
“You okay?”
Daniel almost laughed.
It came out as one dry breath.
“I have no idea.”
She leaned against the frame.
“I’m sorry.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything before I understood.”
“You answered a question.”
“I showed you a photograph.”
“I saw the photograph before you knew who I was.”
Maya rubbed her thumb along the edge of the camera strap around her wrist.
“There’s something else.”
Daniel looked up.
She seemed to regret the sentence immediately.
“What?”
“Nothing dramatic.”
“That’s not a useful phrase right now.”
A flicker of embarrassed agreement crossed her face.
“Your wife was nervous about the booking.”
“How?”
“She called twice before she confirmed. Asked about privacy. Asked whether images ever appeared in our portfolio. Asked who could access the gallery.”
Daniel said nothing.
“She paid for the session herself,” Maya continued. “No employer. No corporate account. She requested that the invoice only list the name Claire Bennett.”
“Did you think that was strange?”
“People have reasons.”
“What reason did she give?”
“She said it was a family reunion after a long separation.”
The word reunion landed differently.
Not family portrait.
Reunion.
Daniel stood.
“How long?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did she seem happy?”
Maya’s face softened in a way he did not want to see.
“Yes.”
He nodded once.
That hurt more than he expected.
Not because he wanted Claire unhappy.
Because he had spent eight years believing he knew what made her happy.
“Did she call the man her husband?”
“No.”
“Did he behave like one?”
Maya took a second.
“He was familiar with her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
“Maya.”
“She seemed comfortable with him.”
Daniel looked toward the office wall.
There were scuff marks near the floor where equipment cases had hit it.
“How comfortable?”
“I’m not going to interpret someone else’s marriage from forty-five minutes in a photography studio.”
“That’s fair.”
He put his phone in his pocket.
“Did they leave together?”
“The kids left with him.”
“And Claire?”
“She stayed maybe ten minutes.”
“Then?”
“She left alone.”
Daniel nodded.
He picked up his jacket and walked back into the studio.
At the monitor, the photograph still waited.
Maya reached to close it.
“Don’t.”
Her hand stopped.
Daniel studied Claire’s face.
He had been looking for guilt.
There wasn’t any.
There was joy.
That was worse.
“Can you tell me his name?”
Maya shook her head.
“I don’t have it. The booking was under Claire.”
Daniel looked at the boy.
Brown hair. White shirt. Fifteen, Maya had said.
The girl looked older by about a year.
He tried to imagine Claire pregnant sixteen years earlier.
He could not.
Not because it was difficult biologically.
Because the picture collided with the entire architecture of their marriage.
Claire had told him she had never wanted children.
Not couldn’t have them.
Didn’t want them.
The distinction had mattered when they met because Daniel, thirty-six then and recently divorced, had been uncertain whether he still wanted a family.
Claire had said it on their fourth date.
I need you to know something before this turns serious. I’m not going to become somebody’s mother.
Daniel had appreciated the bluntness.
By thirty-eight, he had decided that what he wanted was Claire.
They married in a courthouse on a rainy Monday and held a dinner two months later for friends.
At forty-one, while helping his younger brother assemble a crib, Daniel had felt a small ache he did not discuss.
At forty-two, Claire had found him reading an article about older fathers.
She had stood in the kitchen doorway.
Are you changing your mind?
He had looked at her.
No.
May you like
He had told himself it was true.
Now he stared at two teenagers whose existence his wife had concealed while repeatedly insisting she had never wanted children.
