He sits back. “That’s the photo? You could tell something horrible was happening for those people to be on the floor. Haunting. That genie lamp. Like a wish gone wrong. The shadow play, thanks to your low angle and the lighting. Everyone looking toward the window. You could hear them listening. No caption necessary—you felt the fear.”
Those people. She knows he didn’t mean it that way, but the words stick with her. Then she remembers how they’d snuck outside to find Miriam. How they’d fallen asleep together, all of them in the dining room, on the cushions, afraid to be alone. How she wished it were a dream and woke the next day telling herself it was. A family she loved at one of their worst times. Now on a wall. Those people. “I shouldn’t have submitted it.”
“You’re protective of them. I get that.”
She nods and spears a piece of chicken with her fork.
“Tacos,” he says. “A handheld food, by the way.” He smiles and watches as she continues to eat with her fork, then takes a swig of his beer and yanks off his bib, done. “I went through this. With a kid. Only knew him for a day, one shitty day that you don’t need to hear about and I talked about enough to kill some of the ache, but I couldn’t look at those images for months. I’d seen firsthand that a camera could be more powerful than a rifle, but it didn’t make it easier, coming back and just trying to be after everything. It’s a catch. You gotta be invested in your subject. You gotta have empathy or it’s obvious you don’t. But you can’t be so invested that you don’t get the shot. So I learned it then. It’s a mistake, getting close to your subjects. It’s a mistake to care too much. And accepting that, it either destroys you or makes you better.” Another swig and he seems to think of something. “That girl, though. You said you weren’t brave. But you saved her. You know that, right?”
The tears are fast and infuriating. She holds her fists to her eyes, as if it would mask the fact that she’s crying, and Peter awkwardly leans across the table and presses his napkin toward her.
“People are gonna think I just dumped you,” he says, and she laughs and sees red taco sauce from his plate now on his shirt. She points and he looks down, shaking his head as the waitress drops off a damp cloth, which he uses to dab at the spot futilely. “Give yourself time. What you went through, it’s a system shocker. Be kind to yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
And then she takes a deep breath and tells him about the other roll of film, the one under her bed—the time she did do something wrong. She tells him that the film makes her dream back that day. And he listens and flags the waitress for two more beers.
“We can look at it together,” he says when the waitress brings the check. “Use the lab at work. After hours. No one there to witness any of it.”
“But I know what’s there. Even when I wasn’t looking, I know what happened. I just don’t want to see it again.”
“You lived it. But facing it after the fact, that’s a different part of processing it. That’s what your dream is telling you—to look at it. Trying to forget isn’t making it go away.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“Then you’re not ready. When you are, you let me know. Next week, in a year. Whenever. I’m not going anywhere, even though I should. All you kids taking over.” He grabs the check from the billfold and she reaches for her purse. “No. Paper’s paying. This is a working meal.” A pause. “You’ve got it, you know. I don’t know if I told you that.”
At first, she thinks he’s talking about the check, which is in his hand, but then she understands what he’s saying. Her smile is brief, but the words linger in her mind.
A half block from their building, Peter stops walking. The man behind him is forced to stop short and glares as he passes.
“It’s not over,” Peter says. “But I’m not gonna lie to you. The contest is looking like a formality. Politics. Like I said.”
My uncle just shot eighteen with Byron. Hannity. The whole thing makes her sick. A farce. A way to get the staff invested. Toying with them for months, making them think they had a chance, upping morale with a false promise of opportunity. She can’t look at him, still trying to understand. “So they’re giving it to Hannity.”
“I didn’t say. And I didn’t say I agreed with it, whatever it is.”
“It’s your department.”
“But not my paper.”
“Okay,” she says, now facing him, “so why, then? Why are you helping me?”
He takes her arm and pulls her toward the side of the building, out of the way of others.
“Because I saw it in you. What I went through. When you came back, that look. You were a ghost of yourself.”
We’re two ghosts walking in a garden. He’s watching to make sure we don’t disappear.
“Most people, they take their vacation, they get Hawaii exotic or visit the in-laws, go see the Grand Canyon. Hotels and pool drinks. I heard someone was going to Iraq, I was interested. I heard it was you, and you were there taking photographs, I was more interested. Then you came back and I saw you were still there. And I know what that’s like. You’re an island. And no one needs to be an island.”
A clenching in her chest. It’s too much at once; she’s grateful, devastated, and somehow, strangely, hopeful. But when she opens
