“One reason, maybe.” He’s standing in a reach of light from the open door, and she averts her eyes from the brightness. “I don’t know if I can,” she says, nodding to the folder.
“I wouldn’t want to either. That’s why I’m here. Didn’t want to give this to you at work. Some of it’s blurry, but too much of it isn’t. I used a color filter to bring out the subjects, which helped, but you might not thank me for it.”
She looks at the yellow-and-orange folder, the drawings of a woman playing tennis, two boys playing football, and others off to the races. She used to color them in. Adding googly eyes and wild hair, back when the only goal was to escape a teacher’s words.
He motions toward the kitchen, where Mason’s most likely eating his cereal. “You’ve got someone here to be with you?”
A rush of car tires outside sounds like rain. Then there’s a blast of light as he shifts, moving slightly to the side. She blinks. Behind him is a small point of yellow. The rose. Upstairs, a door opens and shuts and Rebecca calls to her, her name going long. Oliviaaaaa.
Olivia nods, and Peter hands her the folder.
Fear, apparently, chases away a hangover. At noon, she’s at the nursery buying soil and compost and fertilizer. At the last minute, she throws in zucchini and tomatoes and anything else a man with a safari hat says likes hot weather.
Neither Mason nor Rebecca understands. They watch her in the yard with the shovel, sweating out last night’s wine. It’s only a very small section she’s working on, but she will do it right. Dig out the weeds. Sift out the grass. Amend the soil. But the soil is packed and hard, and it takes hours to get the little bed ready, so when the first plant goes in, she stands back, exhausted in that earned way, the way that’s edged with reward. There it is. One seedling with small leaves, just little flaps of green in a dark expanse. She kneels and plants the next one. And the next. Holding the new plants upright, tucking them in. He will love this, she tells herself. Those sad, hopeful words. Then she thinks of the vacant lot behind their house and decides that’s next. A neighborhood garden. When he’s back.
At last it’s done, and she stands in their yard, observing. Baking in the Los Angeles sun and watching the windows of his room, feeling his absence like a draft. The folder is on her bed. After dinner, she decides, then she’ll look inside. Now she cranks the knob on the faucet, and water pumps through the pipes and shoots from their sprinkler in a tinseling arc. The soil goes dark. Leaves drench and sag, but she knows they’re being fortified. This is her favorite part. Like finally feeding someone a meal you spent all day making. She sits at the wooden table on the patio and watches the water, listening to its pulse.
The sun takes a turn. A moment of glow. Mason brings her a gin and tonic and sits at the table as well, opening his sketch pad. A mockingbird swoops from a wire to a tree, and gnats catch the light, becoming beautiful. Soon Rebecca brings out dinner. And life goes on.
Peter Darrow printed every photo in eight by ten. She can tell by the weight of the folder, the feel of the pages. Outside her door, she hears the floorboards groan and knows Rebecca and Mason are standing by. For a moment longer, she studies the drawing of the running men on the folder, the lines behind them that indicate a burst of speed. Just look, she tells herself. Everything in here has been seen. Just look again.
She flips it open. A piece of white paper is on the right, concealing the photos beneath, and with this she understands that they are the continuation and that he knew she’d need to ease her way in. He knew those images couldn’t be the first seen.
So she looks to the left, and there it is. The first photo.
The valley, the houses. Damask rose oil mixed with the beauty of the day. Then the perspective changes—a new angle of the valley. And another one. One more and suddenly she hears the buckshot of birds, the frantic flapping wings. She’d turned, and then she’d seen. Now she flips to the next photo, and there it is. The man with the hood on his head, neck twisted from a punch. She’s grateful for the hood. Perhaps the soldiers had been grateful as well—perhaps even they couldn’t look him in the eye.
More photos. Him kneeling, trying to stand. Him on the ground, the soldier’s leg extended to his stomach. The trees still beside them. Even now, she remembers the feeling of her back burning as if blistering, exposed. His body lengthened, a reaction to another kick. Still another, now to his mouth. Only when her hand comes away wet from her face does she realize she’s crying, and for a moment she stares at her thumb, not wanting to look back because she knows what comes next. That gleam of the knife. But she has to do this. She flips to the next image, and there it is. A sheath of light from the blade. And the next photo, his body hunching. His body. She stares, adjusting the words. Soran’s body. He was not the subject. He was Soran.
She lets herself feel this. Lets it wind through her, inching out, and then realizes she’s shivering, cold, like those moments with a fever when blood goes to the heart in an effort at protection and the skin chills. She hears her own breathing, sharp inhalations that don’t seem to bring enough oxygen.
But she forces
