Chapter 7: Count of Eight

"Ma'am," I said, "who was standing between you?"

The widow looked at the picture.

"Nobody, sugar," she said. "I guess we just stood like that."

Mom came out of the kitchen drying her hands on a dish towel.

She saw the album open on the widow's lap and stopped.

Then she came over, closed it gently, and set it back on the coffee table.

"Let her eat while it's hot," she said.

We walked home under the streetlights without talking for a block.

"She lost somebody, Mom," I said. "The same way."

"Old people's pictures are full of holes."

"Not like that."

Mom kept walking with her arms folded over her purse.

"You promised me," she said. "About the camera."

"I know."

"Then keep it."

At ten the next morning I drove up Rountree Hill with my good camera and two lenses.

The goddaughter had bought a new dress in Atlanta, strapless, with a long train.

It fit her perfectly.

I posed her on the front stairs and in the garden and by the parlor window.

My left hand was clumsy on the focus ring, but I'd learned to shoot right-handed that week, and the pictures were good.

She didn't speak to me once, and I didn't need her to.

Miss Eugenia watched from the hall in her camel cardigan.

Every time she came near me, my left hand went warm.

The first time I thought I'd imagined it.

The second time she leaned in to fix the goddaughter's veil, and heat ran up my wrist.

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