The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Copyright

I took the envelope.

I didn't let go of Milo's hand to do it.

"Tell him I'll see him Friday," I said.

The lawyer nodded and walked away.

Milo looked up at me.

"Am I in trouble?"

"No, baby. Never. This is grown-up stuff, and you didn't do one single thing wrong."

On Friday the hearing took nine minutes.

Warner's lawyer called it an abduction.

My lawyer held up her phone.

One of the teenage girls in that lobby had posted a video. It had two million views by then.

It showed my husband smiling with all his teeth and saying, "Of course, bud. Go keep her company."

The commissioner watched it twice and denied the emergency order.

Then she looked at my address, which was a motel, and Warner's, which was a four-bedroom house near Milo's school.

Until the full hearing at the end of July, Milo would stay in the house with his father during the week.

I'd have him every weekend.

Warner smirked at me across the aisle.

He'd taken off his wedding ring too.

The following Wednesday, my lawyer sent the letters.

One went to Whitmer Lake & Coast on University Avenue, with a copy of my certificate.

It listed thirty-one photographs on their website, their ads and one billboard on Highway 101.

The others went to my sister's sponsors.

Two years of beach mornings were still on my old camera's memory cards.

Every file was stamped with my camera's serial number, the date and the exact second.

My lawyer had registered every single one.

"You took them," she'd said on the phone. "They're yours. That's the whole law, really."

Warner's company wrote back in a day.

Mr. Whitmer disputed my authorship of the photographs.

The billboard stayed up.

My sister's sponsors didn't write back at all.

They just started making calls.

The next Monday, a little after seven, Bean came running into the darkroom with her dad's tablet held over her head.

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