“You’re right. It won’t. But changing your focus will. Just try it.” He shouldered his bag again and picked up his coffee. “See how it feels.”
Now, squatting in the bright sunshine, she was determined to prove him wrong. It wasn’t that she wanted to take bad shots—to squander her time, to waste her opportunity—but she kept hearing his words. “This is amateur. You’re taking shots you think you need to take.”
She’d known those shots weren’t great before he looked at them—and she hated that those were all she had to show him—but hearing the words out loud made something inside her deflate. And because of that, it made her angry. She’d come here to open herself up to creativity, not have someone squash it.
So she did what she always did when someone made her feel small and inadequate—she pushed in the opposite direction. Here she was in The Bottoms, searching for the muse Gregory said she wouldn’t find. Broken trees? Check. Sun-parched grass? Check. A barren space ruined by a storm? Check.
But in what was supposed to be a wasteland, all she saw was life. Yes, much of the area was damaged, but she saw bright-green vines encircling twisted and broken tree trunks, golden wildflowers growing out of a hole in a tree lying on its side, a white-tailed deer bounding over a section of tangled fencing. It was exquisite, so different from the pretty scenes she’d tried to capture the week before.
Though she still wanted to be mad at Gregory, it seemed his harsh words had given her a necessary shove. She wasn’t sure if this was the creative eye he wanted her to uncover, but it seemed her eye was better suited for finding the inferior, the unloved, the damaged, and The Bottoms provided an abundance of them all.
She worked for a while with her own camera, capturing the sharp colors and angles of light. When she switched to Gregory’s Rollei, which produced square-format black-and-white photos, it was all about texture and shadows. The Rolleiflex TLR was what most people associated with old-time photos. The photographer held the camera at chest level and looked down into the finder instead of holding it to the face and looking straight ahead.
Shooting with a camera like this was a whole different experience than using a standard camera, and it took her a while to get used to it—holding it steady at the correct level, remembering that the mirror reversed the viewfinder image. It also forced her to slow down, to think about a shot before hitting the button. Once she got the hang of it though, she was able to focus on the trees above her, balancing on top of mounds of sand and dirt to get an angle right, taking her time, enjoying the peace.
She wondered about the film though—did Gregory develop it himself? Take it into town to get it developed? Other than the Epson printer that printed digital shots, she hadn’t seen evidence of a photo lab or darkroom in any of Halcyon’s studios. One thing was for sure—she was glad for the lack of an LCD screen on the camera. No need to waste time seeing how the pictures were coming out. She could continue shooting and just imagine she was capturing things the way she wanted.
When her growling stomach told her lunchtime had come and gone, she paused and ate a granola bar in the shade. As she rested she pulled her phone out of her bag. She didn’t even check to see whether she had service, she just wanted to see the photo she used as her home screen, a recent shot of Addie and Walsh. They sat in the middle of their front yard, searching for the one four-leaf clover they were sure they’d find.
Jenna had taken the photo before the girls heard her approach. The late-afternoon light was perfect, almost creating a halo around them, and the girls filled the shot in a way that would have made Max proud. Maybe not Gregory—he’d probably find something wrong with it.
She’d shown the photo to Sam one morning as they drank their coffee together.
“They’re beautiful, just like their mother.” He set his coffee down and looked closer at the photo. “The blonde one looks like you.”
“You just say that because of the hair.”
He sat back in his chair and picked up his cup again. “Do they look like their father?”
Jenna’s stomach did that uncomfortable clenching thing it did whenever anyone brought up the girls’ father.
“Maybe a little.” She blew a stray curl out of her eyes and felt his careful gaze on her.
“How long has it been? Since the divorce?”
Jenna stared at him a moment without speaking.
“I’m sorry, I . . .” He inhaled. “I just assumed you were divorced. Is he . . . ?” From his pained look, she knew she had to say something quick before he got the impression she was a widow.
“No, no, that’s not it. It’s fine. It’s been, uh . . . I’ve been on my own for a few years now.”
By the sweet and well-timed grace of God, Mario waved at her then, allowing her to sidestep any more questions she didn’t want to answer.
A bird chirped nearby and brought her back to the present. She shifted her position against the rough bark of the tree and stretched her legs out in front of her. What she’d said to Sam was mostly true—as long as five, going on six, years was still considered “a few.” It was just easier to gloss over the truth than spill it across the clean table in the back corner of Full Cup as Carrie Underwood blared on the speakers.
Her girls had had no choice in who their father was, even who their mother was. Whenever she wished she could pack up and head west again, or north, or anywhere but where she was, she thought of her girls, touched their skin, listened
