The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Opening

I watched him in the mirror for a long time.

He was holding his breath. Waiting for the face.

"You can ask him," I said. "It's your night too."

He let the breath go.

That night he called Warner from his watch, in the bathroom with the door shut.

I didn't listen.

When he came out he just said, "He said maybe."

The gallery was on a corner south of Market, with tall windows and a polished concrete floor.

At five-thirty on Saturday the room was empty except for the four of us and thirty photographs.

The heron, enormous, on the wall facing the door.

Emerald Bay, First Light, with S. Harrow in pencil in the corner, where it belonged.

The twelve from the blue binder in a long line, the ice and the moon and the pier.

And at the very end, side by side, the morning in the bed and the blur of a woman running.

Bean walked the whole room twice, reading every label out loud.

She'd worn a dress for the first time since she was six, and her LAKESHORE CAMERA hoodie over it.

"You spelled Carnelian right," she told the gallery owner.

"I had help."

"Not from me. I spelled it wrong twice."

Casey was in the camera tie again.

He stood in front of the heron with his hands in his pockets and didn't say anything for a long time.

"What?" I said.

"I was in the boat," he said. "I was right there. And I didn't see it until you showed me."

At six the doors opened.

By six-thirty I couldn't see the floor.

Photographers I'd read about at twenty-two. Collectors in good coats.

A woman who'd taught me darkroom chemistry at community college hugged me and cried into my hair.

The man from the rescue crew had driven down from Tahoe City in his fleece.

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