The First Move Page 3

  “Hmmm?”

  “Thank you for coming over.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  RENIA WISHED SHE had some other profession—any other profession—when Ebony walked in the studio door with her three-day-old infant. But she cooed over the tiny, sleeping child while Ebony looked on proudly. Harrison, Ebony called the boy, named for his grandfather. Even at ten pounds, the name engulfed the child, but he would probably grow into it.

  She could do this, Renia thought as she placed a hand on Ebony’s shoulder. Whether the hand was to reassure Ebony or herself, she didn’t know. Today was no different from any other workday. Nothing about her life had changed. She hadn’t wanted it to.

  Amy had already set up the first set of props for the infant photos, a Cubs home jersey draped over a dark wood rocking chair. Ebony’s fiancé was the second baseman for the Cubs.

  “Is this going to work?” Ebony looked from her baby to the height of the chair and back to Harrison. “You assured me it was safe, but I don’t quite believe it.”

  “Newborn photographs are made through the magic of Photoshop. I’ve already taken pictures of the chair, empty, just as it looks now. Before you set Harrison on the chair, we’ll surround it with beanbags. So long as Harrison’s sleeping deeply, he’s unlikely to roll. Even if he does, he’ll land on the beanbags, not on the floor. You and Amy will both be right beside him in case he stirs.” She flipped on the heat lamp above the chair and tested both straps on the boom arm to make sure they were secure. A falling heat lamp was as risky to a newborn as rolling off an armchair.

  Concentrate on the process, Rey. Harrison is just like any other baby you’ve shot over the years. The deep breath she took quivered in her lungs, but neither Amy nor Ebony noticed the shudder.

  “Later, I’ll cut the picture of sleeping Harrison out of the image with the beanbags and put him in the image of the empty chair. Anyone who looks at the final photograph will see a baby sleeping on his daddy’s jersey on a rocking chair. We’ll take the pictures of Harrison in his dad’s glove and helmet the same way.”

  Ebony nodded. “You explained that to me earlier, but I still don’t believe it.”

  “Impossibility is what makes these photographs so magical.”

  Amy set up the beanbags while Renia tested the light against Harrison’s skin. Pleased clients called her photographs “joyful,” a look she achieved through vivid colors and heavy contrasts. Against the white jersey, dark-skinned Harrison would shine. The lighting for the baby against the leather glove and blue batting helmet would be harder, but the challenge would keep Renia’s mind off the coincidence of Harrison’s birth long enough to get through the shoot.

  Renia waited while Ebony walked around the rocking chair, testing the beanbags. She tugged on the jersey, which didn’t move.

  “It’s attached to the chair so it won’t slip off the wood,” Renia assured her.

  “Okay, I think I’m ready.” Ebony took the tiny clothing off her baby boy and set him on the jersey, bum in the air, face resting on his hands. She didn’t take her hands off her son.

  Renia settled into place, camera in front of her face and Harrison’s tiny, sleeping body in the lower left of the frame. The rocking chair had been a good choice, artistically. The curve of the top of the chair mimicked the curve in Harrison’s back. Together, the two elements would keep the eye of the viewer circling around the image. Ebony would be pleased with these photographs. “Keep your hands on him until you feel he’s safe.”

  Renia’s reassurance was enough. Ebony lifted her hands off Harrison and Renia began taking pictures. She worked fast, before Harrison could wake up, or get cold or hungry, or pee. When she’d taken enough photographs, Renia lowered her hand and signaled to Amy they were ready. While Ebony took Harrison over to a couch to swaddle and feed him, Amy and Renia switched the props.

  The entire shoot took a little over an hour, part of that time spent trying to get Harrison back to sleep. By the time Ebony and her son left the studio, Renia’s entire body felt like a glass bottle tossed on the side of the highway. She was holding herself together for now, but one swerve and she would break.

  “Can you put the rest of the props away without me?” she asked Amy. “I’d like to get a cup of coffee.”

  “Sure. Can you get me one, too?”

  Renia nodded, her head already turned away from Amy and willing her body out the door. Once on the sidewalk and out of view of Amy, Renia allowed herself to feel. The tears fell and sadness enveloped her, causing her entire body to convulse. People stared at her as they walked past; one older woman asked if she was okay, but Renia ignored their concern. She could make it to the coffee shop and clean herself up in the bathroom. When Amy asked what had taken her so long, Renia would tell her there had been a line.

  * * *

  SOMETHING MOVED OUTSIDE of Renia’s line of sight and the male goldfinch took flight. She snapped a photograph anyway. Goldfinches were a common sight in this area of the Chicago Botanic Garden, but capturing the way the birds bobbed on coneflowers as the breezes blew was a challenge. She’d not yet gotten a photograph that captured both the buoyancy of the goldfinch and its colorful bravado. Looking at the screen of her digital camera, this wouldn’t be a photograph she was happy with, either. Maybe if she cut the photograph so the seeds of the flower were the subject and the tail of the bird an accent? No, the tail was going to be blurry; her shutter speed was too slow for a bird in flight.

  “Still on sabbatical?” Cathy’s Ex was the movement that had ruined her photograph and his voice stirred trepidation in Renia’s heart.

  “Sabbatical?”

  “You wouldn’t call it a vacation.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a sabbatical, either.” Her knees creaked as she stood from her crouch behind a bush. When she had turned to face him, he was smiling the half smile she remembered from the wedding. His daughter, Sarah—her name took a second to come to her—was nearby, smelling a flower. “I took a few days off work. It doesn’t need a name.”

  “You remember me?”

  “Cathy’s ex-husband.”

  The noise he made was somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “Your week off might not need a name, but I have one. One besides ‘Cathy’s Ex.’”

  “Mr. Brislenn.” She remembered his name. She remembered everything about their conversation and how his penetrating eyes and subtle smile spooked the secrets hidden inside her. It had been a long time since a man had caused her to feel.

  Does he already know my secrets?

  “Miles,” he corrected.

  She wasn’t going to argue the point, but neither was she going to call him Miles.

  “Did you scare the goldfinch away to make sure I know your name?”

  “Are you always this prickly?”

  Renia bit her lip. No, she was prickly because this morning’s photo shoot had been painful and she’d come here for peace and quiet, only to be interrupted by the one man who’d threatened the thin crust she’d built over the past eighteen years. Twenty-two years, she corrected. Her past mistakes were a consequence of a chipped protective coating, not the cause of it.

  “I apologize.” She lied as a matter of politeness.

  “Are you taking pictures?” Renia had been so busy trying not to let Miles burrow deeper into her secrets, she hadn’t noticed Sarah approach.

  “I was trying to get a shot of a goldfinch on the coneflower.”

  “Neat. Ca
n I see it?”

  “It’s not a great shot” was on the tip of her tongue, but she said, “Sure,” instead. Apologizing for work people wanted to admire only ruined the experience for everyone. Even if Miles had messed up her shot.

  She pulled the camera strap over her head and turned the screen so Sarah could see it, keeping a tight hold on the camera.

  “Was the finch on this flower?”

  “Yes.” Renia had framed the shot so the finch would be set against a dark green bush and the photograph’s only brightness would come from the gold feathers of the finch and the purple petals of the flower.

  “Why is the flower in the corner? Shouldn’t it be in the middle of the picture?”

  “Sarah—” Miles was looking at his daughter with surprise “—I didn’t know you were interested in photography.”

  “Maybe everything she tells me will be boring and I won’t be, but I’ve never had a photographer to ask.”

  “Sarah!” Miles winced.

  “What? Boring to me. Maybe it will be boring to me. I’m sure it’s interesting to her.”

  “You’re not making it better.”

  Sarah eyed her father, a testing look Renia remembered giving her mother in her early teen years, before she realized her mom didn’t care what she said or did. Miles did care, because Sarah turned back to look at her. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I really want to know the answer to the question.”

  The Ex—she should call him by his name, even in her mind—was a different person around his daughter. With fond smiles, he remained affectionate without treating her like she was a child. More importantly, Sarah clearly respected and adored her father.

  Am I being silly about my fearful reaction to him? Miles Brislenn, doting father, was no one to be afraid of. Her nerves were left over from this morning.

  “Let me introduce you so you can stop using ‘her’ because you don’t know Rey’s name and then you can ask as many questions as Rey will answer. Rey, this is my daughter, Sarah, who you met at Cathy’s wedding. Sarah, this is Rey—”

  “Renia,” she corrected.

  “—Milek.”

  Miles didn’t amend his introduction. She wasn’t being silly about him. He’d called her Rey. Not Renia, a professional and elegant name to match the adult self she’d worked so hard to create, but Rey, who had been a wild, thoughtless teenager.

  “Why’s the flower in the corner—” Sarah halted, looking from Renia to her father “—Ms. Milek?”

  “Rey’s fine,” Renia heard herself say, unable to be formal with this teenager, who must be a taller version of Cathy at the same age, with her dad’s smile. When she lost the braces and grew into her teeth, men would be driven nuts wondering what she was smiling about. Until then, the ponytail, combined with a peasant blouse and denim shorts, gave her a coltish innocence. “The flower is in the corner because photographs look better when you divide the frame into a tic-tac-toe board and put the subject at or outside one of the intersections of the lines. It’s called the rule of thirds.”

  Sarah opened her mouth to ask another question, but Miles interrupted. “We were about to get some coffee. Would you like to join us? Then Sarah’s questions won’t come at you fast enough to push you off your feet.”

  “Dad!” Sarah looked at her father with wide, appalled eyes before turning back to Renia. “I would like to ask you more questions, if you don’t mind.”

  She could say no and disappear into the chirping of the birds, but Renia hadn’t had a chance to look at her own father with the mix of hope and embarrassment on Sarah’s face. As afraid as Renia was of the tingling in her spine when she was around Miles, she wanted to experience the affectionate relationship between father and daughter, if only for as long as it took her to drink a cup of coffee.

  Would her own relationship with her father have been similar at sixteen?

  Stupid question with no answer. Renia had been old enough when her father died to remember a man who wasn’t quite comfortable with his children. Karl said he was afraid to break his daughters and wasn’t as nervous around his sons, but she didn’t have enough memories of her dad to agree or disagree with her brother. She just knew her father had been unsure around her—and she preferred to imagine him as perfect, rather than as the flawed human he must have been.

  “Okay. My iPad is in my bag and I can show you examples of what I mean.”

  * * *

  SARAH AND MILES were already waiting at a table with three cups of coffee, one enormous, when Renia got to the coffee shop.

  “Here.” Sarah pushed one of the coffee cups over to Renia.

  She took a sip and the coffee-flavored foam of a café au lait, probably with two sugars, slipped down her throat. She looked at Sarah in surprise. “How did you know how I take my coffee?”

  “Mom brought you coffee once, and called to ask how you would like it.”

  “I’m impressed you remembered.”

  “Thoughtfulness is a trait she inherited from her mother,” Miles responded. “I take no credit.”

  “Whose is that?” Renia gestured to the giant cup. “I didn’t know they sold coffee that size.”

  Miles smiled. “Cathy’s on her honeymoon. Sarah’s using this opportunity to have things her mom doesn’t allow, like coffee in the afternoon.”

  “We also got cookies.” Sarah pushed a plate of cookies over. “I didn’t know what you liked, so we got one of everything.”

  “Thank you.” With the stress of the morning, Renia hadn’t been hungry for lunch. Now she was thinking of going over to her mother’s restaurant for dinner and Healthy Food was best on an empty stomach. But a treat would be nice, she figured.

  She took a snickerdoodle with thanks, disarmed by the thoughtfulness of father and daughter. “What other questions do you have about photography?”

  “Can I see examples of what you mean—the tic-tac-toe board?”

  “Sure.” Renia took a sip of her café au lait to wash down a bite of cookie before digging her iPad out of her bag. She turned her tablet on and opened up her photos. “Here are a couple pictures of buffleheads.” The ducks weren’t as colorful as she normally liked in her waterfowl photos, but the name made her giggle. “In this one, the ducks are in the bottom right of the tic-tac-toe board, swimming away. With the expanse of water rippling in the rest of the image, your mind creates a story for you. Where are the ducks going? What are they swimming away from? If the ducks were in the middle of the frame, they’d just be ducks.”

  “So the lines that appear on a digital camera screen aren’t to help you get the picture in the center?”

  Renia smiled. “No, just the opposite. It’s the most basic rule of composition and one you should always follow unless you have a compelling reason to break it. And the compelling reason has to be about the story of the photograph, not because you want to. Paintings follow the rule of thirds, as well. We can try it with the cups on the table.” She arranged two coffee cups and the plate of cookies into a tableau, then turned on the camera in her tablet and handed it over to Sarah. “Take pictures of the cups and cookies. Put them in the top and bottom corners, and then in the middle. We’ll compare.”

  By the time they finished their coffee and cookies, Sarah had asked all her questions about composition and Renia was feeling less anxious about the Ex. He was just a father and another guy trying to make a modern family work after divorce and remarriage.

  Until he said, “Goodbye, Rey,” with
a wink, before putting his arm around his daughter and walking down the street.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE SMELL OF cabbage, potatoes and pork engulfed Renia as soon as she stepped into Healthy Food. So did a hug from her mom.

  “I didn’t think I’d hear from you for another week or so.” Her mom pulled back to look at Renia before swallowing her in another hug. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Renia’s smile was forced, but a least she had one. “I need to look through old yearbooks and thought I’d stop by for dinner.”

  Her mom looked around the packed restaurant. At least five people in the buffet line hadn’t even gotten to the plates. “We’re too busy for me to eat with you.”

  “That’s okay. I was going to take it to go and eat while looking through the yearbooks at your house.”

  Lips pursed, her mom regarded her, but she didn’t argue. “Will you still be there after I close up?”

  “If you want.”

  “Of course I want. Stay here. I’ll go get your dinner from the kitchen.” Her mom hurried off. They were both uncomfortable with one another, and would be until the end of August, when the pain stopped being so raw.

  Father Szymkiewicz patted the empty seat at the booth next to him, so Renia joined him and Father Ramirez at their table. They both commented on how nice it was for Mrs. Milek to have her family living in Chicago and able to visit. Smiling and nodding seemed the only response.

  “Here, Renuśka.” Her mom put a to-go container and set of keys on the table. “I’ll hurry tonight, so please be patient.”

  “I said I’d wait,” she responded, unable to hide her irritation.

  Her mom’s lips twitched nervously, but she held her tongue. What was the song, walking on broken glass? Her mom was stepping carefully and Renia couldn’t do anything but poke at her. The month would end, the pain would ease and their relationship would return to a normal mother/daughter relationship, complete with standard levels of tension.