The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Temporary Orders

"Then you won't mind when the judge asks him," I said.

Her smile slipped.

She went out to the white convertible and drove away with the top down.

Casey put the broken Brownie in a padded envelope and wrote BEAN on it.

"We'll fix it," he said. "She'll yell first. Then we'll fix it."

Bean yelled for twenty minutes.

Then she spread the pieces on a towel on the darkroom floor and handed me a screwdriver.

The full hearing was set for Tuesday, July twenty-eighth.

My lawyer said the judge would want to see where Milo would sleep.

So I needed a bedroom that wasn't next to an ice machine.

That week a man from Sacramento saw the heron print Casey had hung in the shop window and paid nine hundred dollars for it.

The first photograph I'd sold in ten years.

I put the money down on a two-bedroom cabin three blocks up from the lake.

It had a woodstove, a crooked deck, and a kitchen with a real oven.

Warner cancelled two of my four weekends in July.

A surf competition. Then a stomachache.

The other two, Milo and I ate tacos from the truck by the pier, because the motel didn't have a stove.

He was polite and quiet. He called Mackenzie every night at bedtime and took the phone into the bathroom.

I didn't ask him what he called her.

On the twenty-eighth, Casey drove me down to San Jose in the dark.

The courtroom was small and cold.

Warner sat at the other table in a navy suit, tanned and rested, his lawyer beside him.

Mackenzie wasn't there.

Warner's lawyer went first.

My breakdown. My motel. My four-hour move. My husband's heartfelt post asking for prayers.

"Mrs. Whitmer walked out on a seven-year-old boy with a note on the counter," he said. "Mr. Whitmer has been the stable parent all along."

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