The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: First Light Again

I stood under the red light with my wet hands held up in front of me.

The last frame dripped on the line.

A man's hand, the fingertips stained dark, holding out a ring against the water.

I knew those fingertips.

I'd know them in the dark. I had.

I turned off the safelight and opened the door.

The shop lights were on.

Casey was sitting on the glass counter in his coat.

On either side of him sat Bean and Milo, in pajamas and snow boots and parkas.

They were trying very hard to look like they'd been there by accident.

"They wouldn't stay asleep," Casey said. "I tried."

"It's not a secret," Milo said quickly. "It's a surprise. Bean says that's different."

"It's totally different," Bean said.

Casey slid down off the counter.

He took a small box out of his coat pocket.

His hands, the ones in the picture, were shaking.

"I had a whole speech," he said. "It was good. It was mostly about coffee."

I laughed.

He opened the box.

A thin gold band, with a small green stone in it the color of the bay at first light.

"I don't want to make you a vote of anything," he said. "So I'm just asking. Will you marry me? Us. All of us."

"Say yes," Bean whispered loudly. "Say yes, say yes, say yes."

"Bean," said Milo. "She has to think."

I didn't have to think.

"Yes," I said.

Bean screamed so loud the bell over the door rang by itself.

The divorce was final in January.

Milo started at the school by the lake the same week, one grade below Bean.

By February they'd been sent to the principal's office together twice, both times for defending each other.

My sister came to the wedding.

It was on the pier across from the shop, on a Tuesday morning in June, the eighth.

Bean's aunt. The rescue crew in their fleeces. The gallery owner, who'd driven up at dawn and cried through the whole thing.

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