someone came along and tried to get through to her vulnerabilities, she assumed she would be hurt again and turned away, isolating herself and blaming those who’d hurt her in the past.
“I’m not sure how to start,” she whispered.
“You just did.” Meredith squeezed her hand. “If you really want my opinion, I think that before you talk to Cliff, you should start with forgiving your parents.”
“My parents?” Anne shook her head. “What do they have to do with George and me?”
“Everything if you’re going to have a healthy relationship with him. Annie, every time we’re with any of our relatives who have kids, I can see the hurt in your eyes. You think you hide it, but I know you better than most.”
Not wanting to have an emotional breakdown in the middle of a restaurant, Anne gathered her wits—and defenses—took a deep breath, and dabbed the corners of her eyes with her napkin. “How did you get so smart?”
“Well, I do have a master’s degree in art history, even though I don’t use it most of the time. That’s almost as good as a professional therapist, right?” Meredith grinned and took out some cash and laid it on top of the tray with the check. “I know this is a lot to handle over lunch on a sunny Saturday afternoon. And I didn’t mean to push you so hard. But I also don’t want to see you lose the best thing that could ever happen to you. So please, if you need help with any of this, come talk to me. You know I’m at your disposal twenty-four-seven.”
“I know. Thanks.” Anne put her money down, too. She hugged Meredith and kept her arm around her cousin as they left the restaurant.
Half an hour later, alone in her apartment, Anne pulled several storage boxes out of the large hall closet until she found the particular one she sought. Stacking the rest neatly in place, she heaved the large plastic bin into the living room, set it in front of the ottoman, and sat with it between her feet.
She stared at the blue plastic. Could she do this? She hadn’t looked in this box since she’d given up hope on Cliff. Steeling herself—and rising to pull a box of tissues closer—she popped the clasps and laid the lid aside.
Like wild creatures released from captivity, memories ravished her as she recognized the items at the top of the container. The notebook she’d put together for the very first wedding she’d ever completely planned—her own. Inside the plastic front cover, a photo of her with Cliff—she smiling and looking like nothing would ever go wrong, and he practicing the smile that would grace the front of every entertainment magazine and supermarket tabloid for the next ten years.
Today wasn’t the day to deal with that particular part of her past. She put it aside, along with the album of photos of the two of them during their nearly six-year relationship—well, more pictures of him in his various stage roles through those years than actual shots of them together. The one in the front of the notebook was one of the few when he wasn’t hamming it up.
Next, she pulled out the scrapbook Meredith had created for her college graduation. Nostalgia and regret mingled as she set it down on the floor. The high school graduation scrapbook went on top of that.
Now she was getting down to it. She pulled out a red photo album with a brass spiral spine and gingerly lifted the cover. In her bad teenaged penmanship on the title page she read,
Three more albums joined it until she finally got to what she was looking for. The padded cover had a faux wood-grain finish with a large script
Her mother had written the beginning date—Anne’s fifth birthday. Anne had written the ending date—the one-year anniversary of the plane crash four years later. Her throat tightened. She hadn’t looked at these pictures since then, as her grandmother had become visibly upset every time she caught Anne looking at photographs of her parents the year she’d lived with them. And she hadn’t wanted Aunt Maggie and Uncle Errol to think her ungrateful by making herself sad looking at them.
Like an old-fashioned television warming up, Anne’s memory slowly faded in as she flipped through the album. She remembered her mother and father with cameras in front of their faces most of the time. Not little ones, but big black monstrous ones that made the most wonderful whirring and clicking noises. Her gaze rested on a photo of her father teaching her all the different parts of the camera. She couldn’t have been more than six years old but knew all of the terminology—from f-stop to parallax to field flattener. Her first few attempts at taking pictures with the cameras she could barely lift followed on the next few pages. She’d helped her mother develop them in the converted-garage darkroom. For her birthday that year, she’d received her mother’s first camera—a 1958 Kodak Signet 35mm—and twenty rolls of film. Her grandmother had taken a picture of her with her parents at the New Orleans airport before they left for some exotic locale like Bora-Bora, Nepal, or Taureg. Their parting instructions were to use all twenty rolls of film in the four months they’d be gone.
Apparently she hadn’t had a precocious talent at it, as the scene when they sat down to critique her work popped into her mind with picture-perfect clarity. Only ten photos—out of the hundreds she’d helped her mom develop—made it into the album. After that session, seeing the disappointment in her mother’s beautiful face and her father’s bright blue eyes, Anne had carried the camera with her everywhere—until her first grade teacher confiscated it because she wasn’t doing her schoolwork. When her grandmother gave it back to her after a week without it, Anne spent all of her free hours trying to practice what they’d taught her about focus, light saturation, contrast, and composition so that when they came back from taking photos sure to win them more national and international recognition, they wouldn’t be disappointed again.
Examples of her “much better” work followed—a close-up shot of ladybugs on a leaf. The branch of an old oak tree dipping down into the creek behind Mamere and Papere’s farmhouse. Uncle Lawson teaching Forbes to play chess. A wide shot of the entire family—except Lilly and Albert—eating Sunday dinner.
She flipped the next page and something slipped out. She caught it before it hit the floor, and her heart lurched. She unfolded the newsprint. There, on the front page, above the fold. A photo of the skeleton framework of the “tallest building ever to be built in Bonneterre” with which she’d won the newspaper’s amateur photography contest. She had to admit, the composition was pretty spectacular, taken from the roof of a nearby office building.
The adult Anne snorted. At thirty-five, she knew why her parents had to leave to do their work. The child within her still wanted to know why they loved doing it more than being with their daughter.
Of course, they’d been thrilled. Had bought her a new camera. Had taken her out to dinner to celebrate.
Then the Smithsonian called. They wanted to display her parents’ photography in a special exhibit in the months leading up to the announcements of the Pulitzer prize, which everyone in the country was sure her parents would win for their photo essay on a flood that ravaged a previously unknown village in the Appalachians. They wanted Lilly and Albert to be there for the opening.
Anne begged to go with them, now that she was an awardwinning photographer herself. They laughed at her earnestness, but she got through to them because after a couple of days, they agreed she could go. They’d take a week and make it a family vacation. So many things for Anne to practice her photography skills on in Washington, DC.
Never having left Bonneterre before, Anne had been excited but tried to imitate her parents, to whom the trip was nothing out of the ordinary. She kissed Mamere and Papere good-bye at the gate at the Bonneterre airport— then just a small regional outfit—and followed her parents outside and up the steps into the small plane, lugging her heavy camera bag. The commuter jet had two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other. She sat beside her daddy, in the window seat, the thrill of finally getting to go with her parents ready to boil over.
Her stomach lurched as she remembered the sensation of the plane picking up speed down the runway. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. She was holding Daddy’s hand, looking out the window at the buildings and trees whipping by. The front of the plane lifted up.
She swallowed again, cold sweat breaking out on her face. Farther and farther back in her seat the g-force had pressed her as the plane lifted off the tarmac. Daddy pointed out the steeple of Bonneterre Chapel and the tree-shaded campus of the university. There was Town Square and the river.
The plane gave a sudden loud
