Chapter 21: Every Frame

"It isn't your wall, Colleen," I said. "It belongs to the harbor."

Colleen's eyes flicked to the crowd, which had gone completely silent.

"Gavin," she said. "Take her out."

Gavin took one step toward me.

The man in the fishing cap stood up from the front row.

"Sit down, son," he said mildly. "I'd like to see the picture."

"There is no picture," Colleen said.

"Sabrina," I called. "Go."

In the booth at the back, a small figure took a long breath and pressed a key.

The big screen above the empty hook lit up white.

The first image came up, and it was wide.

People on the left side of the hall leaned to see the edges.

It was the Bradlee lawn at Christmas.

Colleen sat in the middle in her pearls, with Gavin behind her and Sabrina laughing on the left.

At the far right, half behind a pine, a young woman in a green cardigan held a tray.

"That's the Christmas card," Elias said from behind his camera, in his ordinary carrying voice.

A second image slid in beside it, narrow and clean.

It was the same photograph, cut down to the three Bradlee faces, with the pine tree gone.

The room made a sound.

"That is the card Colleen mailed to the whole harbor," Elias said.

Another year came up, and then another.

By the fourth pair, the man in the fishing cap had stopped watching the screen and was watching Colleen.

Every time a new card slid in, a few more heads turned her way.

By the fifth pair somebody in the back row said, "Oh, that poor girl."

By the sixth a woman near the aisle had started to cry.

"This is private family property," Colleen said, and her voice shook for the first time. "Turn it off. Turn it off, Sabrina."

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