The morning started with Donnie eating toast over the sink the way he always did when he was running late, crumbs on the counter, jam at the corner of his mouth. Sink knife on the edge. I told him I’d found a camera in dad’s last box.
“Yeah?” he said, still chewing.
I hip-checked him so I could get into the junk drawer for batteries. These’ll work.
He snatched his coffee mug and plunked it on the table, sloshing but not quite spilling. Then he sat down and watched me fiddle with the ancient relic. His wry smile was infuriating. I ignored it.
A Polaroid. I couldn’t remember my dad ever using one, but there it was, still loaded and ready to go. Donnie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said let’s take a picture. He scooted his chair back and I sat on his lap and held the camera up. We made faces. The flash went off.
I pulled the photo out and held it, still dark and blank. Donnie’s phone rang.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there.” He was already standing, but his hand lingered on my ass and then vanished. “Hey Chrissy. I’ll be back at lunch, okay? Just gotta run up to the office.”
He kissed me and then he was gone. The side door, the crunch of gravel. His office above the garage, the pandemic conversion that never converted back. Two days a week called in RTO, the rest from home. Fine. Good, actually.
I stood at the counter with the photo, waving it a little the way you weren’t supposed to. Somewhere in the back of my mind: Dr. Anderson’s office at ten. I’d been expecting that call since the mammogram. Those plates. God, like the worst panini press ever invented, squeeze and hold and breathe, and I’d breathed and told myself it was nothing, and then Dr. Anderson’s office called and said she wanted to talk about the results in person.
The photo was starting to come in. Shadows first. The shape of the table, the window behind it, the thin smear of morning light.
Donnie’s face came up clear. The same half-grin he made for cameras, indulging the joke. His mug. The plate with the toast and the jam, pushed slightly back from the edge.
I waited for my face to come in beside his.
It didn’t.
I tipped the photo toward the window. Turned it. Looked for the edge of my shoulder, the blur of my hair, anything.
The space next to Donnie was just light. Bright and empty. The chair beside his was tucked in. I shivered and thought about my sweater.
I set the photo down on the table like a cursed object.
Bad angle. That was the first thing. Camera was old. Half-broken probably. The film definitely was. Light leaks. Exposure issues. All of it.
I picked it up again.
Light. Just light where my face should be. Where I should be.
I turned it. Like maybe the angle– The angle wasn’t going to change what was there.
Set it down. Set it face-down. Flipped it over again.
Donnie’s coffee mug was in the photo. Black. Drips down the side. I could see the drips.
I could see Donnie. I couldn’t see me.
Who took the picture?
Bad film. That’s what it was. Bad film and a broken camera and my father’s closet smelling like socks and pennies and aftershave and I wasn’t going to stand in my own kitchen working myself up over–
I picked it up.
Looked again.
Still light.
Put it down. Face-down. Don’t look at it again.
Don’t.
I grabbed the yogurt. Keys off the hook. Coat. I should have told him about the call. He’d left for his office thinking it was a normal Thursday.
The photo was on the table, dark side up. I could leave it there. I could just leave it there and pretend the morning hadn’t happened. But I already had something to worry about. Already.
Dr. Anderson at ten.
In person is never nothing.
The photo could wait. The camera could go back in its box. Stay there. The light in my face–
Not my face.
The light.
I pushed it to the very centre of the table, grabbed my yogurt, and left it there.
The drive was stop and start: garbage day, school buses, traffic. I came out of the roundabout behind a delivery van, swore at it, found a gap and took it.
Construction on the main road. A flagman in an orange vest turning his sign in the drizzle, bored and cold. I waited. Tapped the wheel. The radio said rain through the afternoon.
The photo surfaced once in my mind and I put it back down. Old camera. Dead film.
When the flagman waved me through I went. I kept driving.
Text from Donnie: Hey. Thinking Mickey D’s tonight? Park by the river like old times.
I read it. Mickey D’s and the river. I didn’t answer. Kept driving.
The four-way stop. And then. The deer. Three of them, picking their way across the intersection like they had nowhere to be, white tails up, completely unbothered. I sat and watched them. Almost smiled. CarPlay chimed: Dr. Anderson. 10:00 AM.
The last deer cleared the far curb.
I turned right.
The garbage truck filled my window. The horn. Then light.
