The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Sisters
The family of four went quiet at the counter.
The mom recognized her. I watched it happen.
Her eyes went from Mackenzie's face to the phone in her hand to me, and her mouth made a small round O.
"Hi, Syl," my sister said.
She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. Her eyes were puffy underneath.
"I drove four hours. Can we talk?"
"I'm working."
"It'll take two minutes."
I finished ringing up the disposable cameras.
Four of them, a bag of film mailers, a postcard of the pier.
"Forty-two eighteen," I said.
The dad paid in cash and didn't take his change. They didn't leave, either.
They drifted over to the postcard rack and pretended to choose.
Mackenzie came up to the counter and set her phone down on the glass, screen up.
The camera app was open.
It wasn't recording yet.
"You're going to drop it," she said. "The claims. All of it."
"No."
"You don't understand what you're doing. Those are brand partnerships. That's my whole income. Do you know how much I make a month?"
"From my pictures? Tell me."
Her jaw went tight.
"They're pictures of me. My face. My body. My life. You just pressed a button."
"From up to my waist in forty-eight-degree water, at six in the morning, because you cried until I said yes."
"Oh my God." She laughed and looked around the shop for an audience. "You're doing it right now. The martyr thing. Poor Sylvie, nobody appreciates Sylvie."
The bell over the door rang. Two hikers came in and stopped short.
Mackenzie turned back to me and lowered her voice to something sweet and poisonous.
"Everyone knows you're jealous of me. Mom knows. Warner knows. You've been jealous since I was born. And now you're a thief. You're stealing my followers. You're stealing my life."
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