The Photo Said I Must Die novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Ninth

On the morning of the ninth, I woke up on my twenty-sixth birthday with Judd's arm across my waist.

I lay there and listened to him breathe.

I was alive, and it was six in the morning, and the rest of the day was still ahead of me.

"Happy birthday," he said without opening his eyes.

"Don't. I haven't made it to noon."

"You will."

By eleven, a hundred people were on the terrace.

The inn's anniversary lunch had been planned since spring, and Judd's aunt had refused to move it by an hour.

"I've fed this town every ninth of September for forty years," she said. "I'm not letting a sawed board spoil my crab."

She had hung paper lanterns from the posts and set long tables down the boards.

Fishermen's wives were laughing at one end.

A band of three old men was tuning up beside the steps.

At the corner of the terrace, over the water, stood table four.

New rail.

Two chairs.

A white cloth, and a little brass number on a stand.

The police chief had sent one young officer in a polo shirt, who stood against the wall with a cup of coffee and looked bored.

Oliver sat at the far end of the terrace with his hands flat on his knees.

He had not filmed anything.

"I told her no," he said when I passed him.

"Good."

"I told her I'd never pick up a camera again."

I squeezed his shoulder and kept walking.

I wore a white dress.

I had not planned to.

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