The First Move Read online

  Sarah gently turned the tank over and back, over and back. “Why are we turning it upside down?”

  Renia looked at her timer. “Now flip the tank every ten seconds. Flip, flip back, put the tank on the counter and count to ten.” Once she was sure Sarah was paying attention to her timing, she answered the teen’s question. “We agitate the film because developer becomes exhausted on highlights. If we didn’t mix the developer around, the highlights would stop developing as the chemicals near them wore out, while the shadows would keep developing.”

  Sarah’s count between flips increased and Renia put a steadying hand on her wrist. “Keep your count. Full-strength developer constantly on the highlights increases the contrast, but can also blow the image. Overagitation produces grainy pictures with no tonality. Steady count.”

  They were silent as Renia checked Sarah’s timing. “Good. Seven more minutes to go.”

  “This is boring,” Sarah complained, but she didn’t stop or lose count.

  “It is. It’s more boring for you right now because I’m telling you what to do and when to do it. Everything from the type of film to the temperature of the developer affects the final product. If you get interested in photography, you’ll learn how to create emotion with chemicals and timing, changing the effect of a photograph with all this boring stuff we’re doing right now.

  “The most famous photos from D-day feel chaotic and scary because an overeager technician melted the film trying to dry them quickly. Most of the three rolls of film were destroyed and the surviving images are grainy, confused, but the viewer can imagine the smoke and noise in the destroyed perfection of the print. In digital and film photography, the art is not just taking a well-structured, meaningful shot, but also in the processing. The photographer’s style often comes through in the processing.”

  “Oh.” Sarah looked down at her hand flipping the tank over, then over at her father. They stood together in the small, poorly lit room, the only sound the barely audible swish of the developer in the tank and Sarah’s counting.

  “Three minutes,” Renia instructed.

  “How do I know I’m not screwing it up?”

  “I wouldn’t let you. If you want to do this again, I’ll help you mix the chemicals, then leave you with instructions and let you do it all on your own. We can work up to the variations in developing time, agitation level, et cetera. That will change the image on the negative. Then we can work on how developing the print can change the photograph. If you want to be a film geek, I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t know. My hand’s a little tired from doing this.”

  “Suit yourself.” Renia hadn’t been hooked from the first, either. She’d agreed to act as assistant to Aunt Maria because she needed something to do. Then her aunt had handed her a camera and she’d discovered she had an ability to capture “the moment.” Not until she’d started taking photographs of nature had she felt a calling with regard to photography.

  Capturing the moment was easy. Standing on the sidelines in Cincinnati had given her a second sense about people’s small movements and the emotion they connected to them. Like any outsider, she had become an observer. Nature, though, didn’t care about her problems. Nature was, and would be, no matter how tumultuous her life. Mother Nature didn’t give her emotion easily; Renia had to mold every last detail from composition to lighting to get the effect she wanted. She especially enjoyed the challenge of birds, as they would both pose for her camera and disappear in the blink of an eye. Control, risk and beauty in equal proportions.

  The timer buzzed.

  “Now pour the developer out, add this and agitate continuously.” She handed Sarah a bottle of stop and set the timer for a minute. “Now pour that out, add the fix and agitate. We’re almost done and then you can rest your hand.” She set the timer for two minutes. “This last step ‘fixes’ the film so it doesn’t react to light any longer. We’ll wash for ten minutes, hang the film up to dry and then we’re done.”

  “When can we make pictures? I want to show my mom.”

  “Tomorrow we can enlarge the negatives into prints.”

  “Not sooner?”

  “Sarah,” Miles called from behind. He’d been silent through the entire process. Renia might’ve forgotten he was there, except she could feel his presence in the room. “Rey is doing you a favor.”

  “Tomorrow’s fine,” Sarah said quickly.

  “Can you come after four? I think my schedule’s pretty busy until then.”

  “No problem.” Miles cleared his throat and Sarah spoke again. “Let me ask my mom.”

  Renia smiled. Sarah was a good girl. Smart, like her dad, and sweet, like her mom. She had a spark of evil teenager, but not enough to ruin her natural curiosity. If Renia ever had another girl, she’d want her to be like Sarah. Or Ashley. But she wasn’t even sure she wanted to have another baby. How do you explain to your child that their mother had given up another child—without that poor child thinking you might give them up, too?

  But projecting either Ashley onto Sarah, Sarah onto Ashley, or either of them onto a nonexistent child was dangerous. Neither girl deserved to be judged in relation to the other, no matter how confused Renia was about her daughter or her relationship with Miles. They may be overlapping complications in her life, but they didn’t have to be interwoven. Any mingling of the issues was something Renia did to herself, and Sarah merited better.

  Stupid, she thought. I’m thinking stupid thoughts again.

  “What’s stupid?” Miles asked.

  Apparently she hadn’t just been thinking them. She’d been saying them aloud. The darkroom was someplace she didn’t share with people and the habit of talking to herself while processing film was hard to break, even with Sarah breathing beside her. The smell of the chemicals was enough to make her stupid.

  The timer beeped, saving Renia from having to respond. She showed Sarah how to remove the film from the tank and squeegee it dry. They attached film clips to the negatives and hung them to dry.

  “This is neat,” Sarah said, peering at the miniature images of herself holding a microphone and belting her heart out.

  Renia smiled, pleased with the girl’s comments. When she had said she was bored halfway through the process, Renia had been afraid Sarah wouldn’t pull back enough from the tedium of agitating film tanks to see the magic in the finished process. “It is, isn’t it? Maybe next time we can try a color film, or turn black-and-white into sepia prints.”

  “Can I take your camera with me sometime and take pictures outside, or of my friends?”

  “Um, sure. Not the camera we used for these photographs, though. I should have another, less expensive camera back at my apartment that you can borrow.”

  While Sarah processed that statement, Renia checked the darkroom to make sure everything they’d used had been cleaned up properly and was set up for tomorrow when they were ready to enlarge. The future was always easier when you laid the foundations for success now, rather than hoping they magically appeared. Of course, she’d had to jeopardize her future first before she learned that lesson.

  “You don’t trust me?” Sarah didn’t sound hurt, just questioning, which made Renia pretty certain the question was a test more than anything else.

  “Let’s work on our relationship before I let you take my several-thousand-dollar camera out of this building.” She also didn’t want to risk her relationship with Miles over a camera. She could give lip service to “it’s only a camera,”
but when her baby was returned with a cracked lens, the possibility that Renia would say something she would later regret was pretty high.

  “Even the old camera is worth that much?” Sarah asked to Renia’s back as she turned off the light and locked the door.

  Old, ancient, antique. Hanging around teenagers was tough on the ego. “Photographers like their toys, and the difference between a point-and-shoot and a camera worth a couple thousand dollars is the difference between an okay shot and a great shot—and that is especially important for a professional photographer. But I have a Vivitar that won’t cost Miles your college fund if something happens to it. I even still have its manual, which has great instructions for a first-time user.”

  Sarah looked mollified, if not pleased about the change in cameras, which was fine. Renia wanted Sarah to like her, but not desperately enough to hand over a very expensive camera.

  As they walked out behind Miles, Sarah whispered, “Are you being nice to me because you’re interested in my dad?”

  The question surprised her. “No, why do you ask?”

  Had other women been nice to Sarah simply because they were interested in Miles? Not that she would be jealous, only he’d given the impression he hadn’t dated much since his divorce.

  “Just wanna know.” Sarah shrugged as she said the words. “Maybe you won’t be nice to me if you break up.”

  “I’d hate to think I’m the kind of person to be mean to you just because your father and I parted ways.” Renia considered her feelings carefully, not wanting to promise the girl something she wouldn’t be able to follow through with emotionally. “If your father and I break up and you want to learn more about photography, I’ll teach you. This isn’t blanket permission, your parents still have to agree, but I’m okay with it. Just so you know.”

  * * *

  “IF YOU break up with Rey, she’ll still teach me how to take pictures.” Sarah shut the car door at the end of the sentence, like Miles needed punctuation after what she said.

  If his daughter hadn’t been so focused on arranging her hair for the drive back home, she would’ve noticed Miles whip his head around to watch Rey’s butt in her tight jeans as she walked back in the door to her building. Sarah had learned to make statements for impact, but she’d not yet learned to watch for the reaction. He hoped it was a sign that she didn’t have a mean streak and that the desire to say outrageous things for a reaction would pass when she turned twenty.

  “I’m not planning on breaking up with her, so I don’t even think that’s an issue.” Two could play the shock-the-relative game. He needed to tell Sarah anyway. “I asked her to marry me.”

  “What!” Sarah turned to him, her hair looking no different than it had when she’d sat in the seat. “You’ve only known her, what, a month.”

  Strange, that was almost the exact same thing Rey had said. “Technically, I’ve known her for twenty years.”

  “With a missing eighteen years in the middle. People don’t marry the person they have a crush on in high school and live happily ever after.”

  He’d been married to Cathy for twelve years, but he didn’t correct his daughter. She was right in the essence of her argument. “I’ll remind you of that when you introduce me to some unsuitable boy and tell me ‘he’s the one.’”

  Sarah was silent for several seconds while she digested the idea of him marrying Rey. Miles drove on home, waiting for her response. She’d already had one parent remarry, so she had some idea what to expect, but that didn’t mean the news would go down easily. She’d always been her daddy’s girl. “Did she say yes?”

  She didn’t say no. He didn’t admit that to Sarah. “What do you think of the idea?”

  “If I hated it, would you take it back?”

  “I’m asking your thoughts, not permission.” He wasn’t going to let Sarah make decisions about his love life, but she was his daughter and a smart girl. She might have some insight on Rey he’d missed.

  “Do I get to ask for your thoughts instead of permission?”

  “When you’re eighteen and can sign your own contracts.” A day Miles both couldn’t wait for and was dreading. Sarah had made it to sixteen without getting herself into deep trouble; she could make it two more years. As much as he admired Rey for turning her life around, Miles hoped Sarah didn’t get off the straight and narrow path.

  “She’s nice enough.”

  “She spends her Sunday with you in a darkroom and is going to lend you her camera, but all you can say is ‘She’s nice enough.’”

  “You didn’t ask for detailed thoughts.”

  “Fine. ‘Nice enough’ will do.” Sarah would come around. She was old enough not to need another mother in her life, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t use another strong female influence. As far as he was concerned, Sarah couldn’t have enough strong women in her life.

  “When are you going to ask her?”

  “I already asked her.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t answer my question about her saying yes or not, so I’m guessing she didn’t answer at all. When are you going to ask her for real?”

  Maybe Sarah didn’t need more strong women in her life. Maybe she was clever enough. “I’m going to Atlanta for a business trip later this month. I’ll ask her when I get back. For real. Maybe this week you can help me pick out a ring.”

  “She’s got great hair.” Sarah flipped the visor down and looked in the mirror again. She did something to her bangs while Miles parked the car. “I wonder if she can teach me how to get hair like hers.”

  And that was the probably the best endorsement a woman could get from his daughter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  RENIA PRESSED MUTE on her remote when she heard her cell phone buzz. She didn’t recognize the number, so she set her phone back on the coffee table and let the sound of a late-night interview with some reality-show celebrity fill her living room again. The show wasn’t interesting, but it was noise and noise was kind of like company, which is what she was really looking for tonight.

  She hadn’t had a man in her life—a serious one—ever, until Miles. And now that he was in Atlanta for business, she found she couldn’t sleep without his warmth next to her. She’d even given him a key because she was sick of having to let him in every night.

  Her phone buzzed again. Same number. When it buzzed a third time, she answered it with a wary “Hello.”

  “Rey, it’s me.”

  “Sarah?” There was muffled noise in the background and then a car door slammed shut. “Where are you?”

  “Lemont.”

  “The suburb?” Of course, the suburb, Renia. What other Lemont is there? “What are you doing there?”

  “I’m at a party. I, uh, I need a ride home.”

  “Does Cathy know where you are?”

  “Mom and Richard think I’m sleeping over at a friend’s.”

  “How did you get out there?” Lemont was a good twenty-five miles west of Chicago.

  “Can you lecture me later? I, uh, I really just need a ride home now.”

  Shit. Renia scrambled up from her couch and grabbed a pen and paper. “Okay. I’ll be there in forty minutes, if the traffic’s good. Where are you?” Sarah gave her the address and Renia made her repeat it to make sure she had written it down correctly. “Is there someplace you can wait safely?”

  “One of the cars on the street was unlocked. I’m in the car, and I locked it.”

  “Stay where y
ou are. I’ll call you when I get to the address. Don’t be afraid to call 911 if you need to.”

  “It’s not that bad, but Rey...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  The drive out to Lemont may have only taken thirty-five minutes, but every last one of those minutes took five minutes off the end of her life. Renia didn’t have to imagine the bad things that could happen to a teen girl, because she’d happily engaged in most of them at Sarah’s age. The thought keeping her foot firmly on the gas pedal was the knowledge that Renia had said yes every time anyone had asked, “Do you want to...?” until she’d moved to Cincinnati. A deeper level of scary could happen when girls said no.

  She pressed the gas a little harder and the speedometer on her little SUV jumped from eighty to eighty-five. God bless the Stevenson for being empty tonight, she thought as she sped past several cars, weaving in and out of traffic, until she got off on Lemont Road. Her GPS never told her to breathe, so she didn’t until she’d parked behind several other cars on a dead-end street with only two houses and turned off the car. Then she dialed her phone and hoped Sarah answered.

  “Rey?”

  “I’m here, zabko.” Whenever her brother Leon was feeling down, Babunia had always called him frog and it just slipped out. “Don’t get out of the car. Tell me which car you’re in and let me come to you.”

  “The green car, between a white SUV and a red hatchback.”

  “I see it. Stay there.”

  Music boomed from the split-level at the end of the street, but she didn’t see any sign of partygoers, other than the large number of cars. Then someone let out a banshee yell from behind a tall wooden fence, followed by cheers and a splash. No neighbors, a pool and alcohol. The house was a teenage party dream—and a parent’s nightmare.

  Sarah was huddled, wide-eyed and shaking, in the driver’s seat of the sedan and she jumped when Renia knocked. The door nearly hit her when Sarah flung it open and collapsed into her arms. Despite the warm fall night, the poor girl was shivering and didn’t stop while Renia held her head tight to her shoulder and stroked her hair. The stink of alcohol wafting off the girl made Renia’s eyes water. They didn’t pull apart until the tremors had slowed.