The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Grilled Cheese

I stood at the counter with the box in my hands for a long time.

The note was a yellow sticky square, pressed down hard at all four corners.

Warner's capitals. The same pen he used to sign listings.

Down the hall Milo was in the bath, talking to his plastic shark.

I thought about throwing the box in the trash.

I put the box back in the backpack instead, exactly the way I'd found it, note side up.

Then I went and sat on the closed toilet lid and held out a towel.

"Bean's coming over tomorrow," I said.

"I don't care," Milo said, and took the towel.

Bean arrived at nine the next morning with a tackle box full of broken cameras.

She walked straight past me into Milo's room.

"That's my bunk bed," she said. "I found it at a yard sale. I get the top when I sleep over."

Milo was lying on the top bunk with his tablet.

"It's my room."

"It's my bed."

"It's a junk bed. And those are junk cameras."

Bean opened the tackle box and lifted out a small silver camera with both hands.

"This is a Leica from 1954," she said. "It's worth more than your whole tablet."

"Liar."

"Ask your mom."

They both turned to look at me in the doorway.

"She's right," I said. "If it worked."

Bean shut the tackle box so hard the latch broke.

By ten they weren't speaking.

Bean sat on the deck sorting springs onto a dish towel, her back to the house.

Milo lay inside with his tablet turned up as loud as it went.

At ten-thirty the tablet died.

He'd left the charger in Palo Alto.

Then a Steller's jay dropped out of the pine tree, landed on the dish towel and flew off with a spring.

Bean screamed.

Milo was through the door before I could blink.

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