We danced badly.
She laughed once, quietly, and it was the first real sound of joy I had heard from her since I’d walked back into her life.
A few days later, I found the strangest item on Sophie’s list.
I wanted to ask her then why she’d left me all those years ago.
“A picture Mom doesn’t take.”
I didn’t understand it until I looked through the frames on their walls.
Hundreds of photos of Sophie, but Rebecca was in almost none of them.
“You’re always behind the camera,” I said that evening.
She shrugged. “Someone has to be.”
“Not tonight.”
“A picture Mom doesn’t take.”
I set up in the living room.
Rebecca protested the whole time.
“I look exhausted, Daniel. I haven’t slept properly in months.”
“You look like her mother,” I said. “That’s exactly what she wants to see.”
Sophie beamed, thinner than she’d been even a few weeks earlier.
We were checking things off her list, but none of us knew how much time we had to finish it.
Rebecca protested the whole time.
Just as I raised the camera, she reached out and grabbed my sleeve.
“No. You too, Daniel. Get in.”
“Sophie, this is for you and your mom.”
“You’re in our good days too,” she said simply.
Rebecca stiffened.
“Sophie, he doesn’t need to be in the picture.”
“You’re in our good days too,”
“Yes, he does. You’re happy when he’s here. I’m not blind, Mom.”
“Fine,” she whispered. “One picture.”
I set the timer and hurried into the frame.
When I looked at the screen afterward, my chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the foundation.
Wyglądaliśmy jak rodzina.
„Jeden obraz.”
Rebecca też to widziała.
Obserwowałem, jak w murze, który budowała przez dwanaście lat, pojawia się jedna, niebezpieczna rysa.
Coś się między nami zmieniło i oboje to czuliśmy.
***
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