“Nice to meet you, Cecily.”
“Are you a friend of the family?”
“No.”
I felt annoyed. I’d heard about this, strangers coming to the funerals of the Triple-Tenners so they could be in on the action, walk past the fence of media, feel a part of it all. Or maybe she was trolling for free booze and food, another person on the funeral diet those women out front were talking about, only this time, she’s happy to be eating it because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I’d heard about that, too.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here?”
She looked at me for a moment, sizing me up.
“Were you a friend of Kaitlyn’s?” Her voice was strangely flat, as if she was masking an accent.
“She was one of my best friends.”
“And she never mentioned me? Not even once?”
This woman whose name I didn’t know started tearing up. I had an odd reflex to comfort her, even though I knew she was about to tell me something that would change my life again, like Tom’s errant texts.
“I . . . Who are you?”
“I’m Franny. I’m Kaitlyn’s daughter.”
• • •
A small part of why I’m up so early sifting through the contents of Tom’s office is so I can hear it when it happens, that slap of the newspaper as it hits our front door. Call me old-fashioned, but I still love the smell of newsprint in the morning. And since it was a family tradition, dividing up the paper into our individual interests, I still do it with the kids. It’s usually Henry who collects it, my early riser, the way he’s been since he was a baby, but I can’t let that occur today.
When I hear it happen, I’m already waiting behind the front door, and I have it open to grab the paper before Henry can get to it.
I needn’t have worried; there’s nothing there. I must be getting full of myself, thinking I might be in the real paper because I kissed a man. I watch the kid who’s delivered our newspapers for years ride away on his ten-speed, unsure of what to do. The photograph is online, and someone’s sure to point it out to at least one of the kids. How will I explain this to them? Although Cassie knows something about the date, that’s not enough. I didn’t say enough last night to make this okay.
The pavement beneath my bare feet is cold, but I can’t seem to make myself move. Then I hear the click, click, click of a camera, rapid-fire like the paparazzi use. It takes me a moment to spot him, because he’s across the street, leaning up against the Hendersons’ tree. I throw the paper down and run toward him.
“Stop it! Go away!”
He lowers his camera for a moment, then lifts it again. And even though I know this means that now he has even better shots of me coming after him like a madwoman in my pajamas, I don’t care.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He lowers his camera again. He’s young, midtwenties, wearing an oversize hoodie with the words Don’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand written across it.
“Hey, lady. Calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down, Bob Dylan. I want you to erase those photos.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. What do you want, money? Is that what this is about?”
“I’m just doing my job.”
“Bullshit. This isn’t a story. Me in my bathrobe is not a story.”
“Of course it is. You might not like it, but it is. Why else do you think they sent me here?”
“Were you here last night?”
“What?”
His surprise seems genuine. While his shape is similar to the man I saw through the window, jumping over my hedge as he ran away, I’m guessing he’s not stupid enough to come back here after escaping the cops.
“Give me your card.”
“Why?”
“I want to buy the photos.”
He gives me that look again, the one that tells me I’m completely naive.
“Come on,” I say. “What’s the harm?”
He fumbles for a moment, then hands me a card. Carl Hilton. Photography for All Occasions.
“You should leave it,” he says.
“We’ll see. Now get, will you?”
“Mom!” Cassie calls from across the street. “What the hell?”
I turn around. Cassie’s holding her phone straight out from her body like an accusation, a look of shock and hurt on her face.
Carl snaps another picture.
• • •
“Okay,” I say twenty minutes later, after I’ve gotten Carl to delete the picture of Cassie after pointing out that she’s underage and barely dressed. “Family meeting.”
Henry groans. Cassie’s still clutching her phone to her chest like she used to hold her special blanket.
“Why does it have to be a ‘meeting’?” Cassie asks. “Why can’t we just have a conversation like a normal family?”
Family meetings were always Tom’s thing. I thought they were a bit corny, but he took them seriously, so eventually I did, too.
“Come on,” I say. “You know the rule.”
“If someone calls a family meeting, we all have to attend!” Henry says. His voice is on the verge of cracking, and I wonder if he’ll end up sounding like Tom. He already stands and walks like him; from behind, he’s a carbon copy except for his hair color. It’s disconcerting, sometimes, when I see him suddenly, when I’m not concentrating. A bit of rage rises up without my being able to stop it. Another thing to hate Tom for, a list that’s too long.
“That’s right. Let’s go.”
They follow me into the living room. We each have our assigned seats. Henry’s is the wingback chair Tom and I found on one of our first furniture outings. It’s covered in a green chintz fabric whose hues match the modern striped rug we found several years later. Cassie’s is the love seat I brought with me from college, re-covered in a dark gray. I take the sectional, making sure to place myself squarely in the middle, using my body to fill the void Tom left.
“So you’ve seen the picture,” I say. “I went to dinner
