Work Text:
She stares at her phone. No messages.
Dread and sadness are tangled up into a hard knot in her gut. She’s sitting on the floor of her studio, half-set up lights around her. Lorn lies next to her, stubby tail wagging a little, even more of a shadow than he usually is. He knows something’s wrong. He’s been here with her before.
Before she can think about it, she starts tapping out a message.
To: Lils
I’m sorry. Thank you for everything.
She hits send.
Then, once more:
To: Lils
I’ll see yo—
She erases the line.
If you want to see—
She erases that one, too.
I lo—
Never mind.
She sets the phone down and flops down against her dog, his solid, unquestioning warmth. He licks her cheek, his ears working. “Maybe just you and me again, boy,” she says, and rubs under his chin. “It’ll be okay.”
One hand steals into the pocket of her jeans. She pulls out a napkin on which is scrawled in a lopsided, hasty script a name and a phone number. Both things belong to a young woman. A sweet, pretty thing with her mother’s smile and her father’s eyes. The child Kathil never thought she would meet.
She stares at the number. Rubs over it with her thumb, as if doing so might erase it and the rest of the afternoon, as if she might take back the selfish impulse to ask the girl her birthday. She hadn’t expected the girl to even know she was adopted; she’d hoped to pass it off as one of those parlor tricks people learn to pass the time.
I knew better.
So much old pain had come spilling out to Lils, afterwards. But Lils, as much as Kathil loves her, isn’t the sort of person who deals well with other people’s need. She’d listened, gotten food into Kathil, remembered that Lorn was in the cab of the truck, had gotten her and her dog to Z and Bela. And that was all she had been able to do. It had been enough, more than enough; more than Kathil ever expected.
She’d left Lils in Bela’s care, and come back to her studio. The work she has to do doesn’t care that she’d met her daughter for the first time yesterday. It doesn’t care that her heart is bending and breaking now.
Take care of her, she’d told Z when she left. I can take care of myself.
She rubs Lorn’s ears. “I promised, didn’t I? I promised I’d take care of you as long as you needed me.” The dog whuffs softly in response.
She forces herself to her feet and shoves the napkin back in her pocket. There are things her daughter needs to know—that she is three-quarters elven, that her paternal grandmother died of ovarian cancer, that she should never take lyrium, even once. That Kathil thought of her every single day for the last eighteen years, even when the remembering sliced into her like thorns.
She leaves her phone where it is. She’ll call her. Tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Next week. Sometime.
She sets up her light rig, climbs the ladder to change the angle of the big flashes, checks the batteries on the transmitters. Takes a few pictures to test the setup. Changes a few more angles. The background needs to be straightened out. She makes a list for things she’ll need for this week’s location shoot and double underlines extension cords.
In the back room, she pulls the shades, intending to work on processing this weekend’s wedding. Instead, a box at the back of the desk catches her eye. A wooden box, carved with a dragon motif in Antivan goldwood. It’s covered with a thick layer of dust.
Don’t do it. Don’t look.
She dusts off the box, and opens it.
The shots are crooked, color uncorrected, many out of focus. Maker, we were so young. There are pictures of a young woman, flashing double middle fingers and a huge grin. A tiny table in a kitchen with peeling and shredded wallpaper, breakfast half-eaten. Kathil herself, not looking at the camera. An arm’s-length picture of Sati and Kathil together, both laughing like they’re invincible.
Sati lying on an unmade bed in an odalisque pose, one hip jutting out, dark nipples erect and an intense look in her eyes. Her locks spread out over the pillow like the shadows of trouble just behind her.
Lorn as a puppy, all huge feet and melting eyes, licking Sati on the nose. Sati’s face is scrunched up. Fastest tongue in Amaranthine! she’d crowed, laughing.
Second fastest, Kathil had replied, taking the picture and feeling the snap of the shutter closing. She’d winked at Sati, and Lorn had come galumphing over to investigate the camera lens.
The last picture is of a cobbled street with the remnants of churned-up snow between the cobbles. A stain spreads over the sidewalk, frozen to the concrete. The color is bad in the print; Kathil remembers that the stain was the color of red rust, brighter than she had expected. The cold preserved the color of the blood.
She turns the picture over. On the back, in her own spiky handwriting, is scrawled I’m so sorry.
Under the pictures is a friendship bracelet, woven out of thread that has faded into a nondescript pinkish grey. Hey, Sati had said that first day, when she’d dropped it onto the book Kathil had been trying to read. You’ll want this.
Why? Kathil had asked.
Everyone wants friends, Sati had said. She was seventeen and Kathil was sixteen, that day at the group home. Even you.
Lorn snores at her feet as she closes the box and puts it back where it was. She stares at the screen, at the pictures of the blandly pretty bride and her pudding-faced groom, at the eight bridesmaids and nine groomsmen, the flower girl and the ring bearer plopped down and crying in the middle of the reception. This is what she does for a living: takes pictures of celebrations she isn’t a part of. Always on the other side of the lens. Separate.
Just an eye, for the seeing. Just the witness.
She pulls her knees to her chest and sets her forehead down against them. Soon enough, the denim over her knees is soaked through with tears.
Her phone’s silent, in the other room. She wonders if Lils is sleeping.
She wipes her eyes, blows her nose, and sets to processing pictures. If there are whispers in the air, she ignores them.