“I know. And so does she. That’s why you made her year.”
Claire smiled at her, eyes soft behind her glasses, cheeks a little flushed. Something low in Delilah’s belly fluttered, a moth around a light.
“No one would ever suspect you of placating anyone, D,” Iris said, stuffing a whole crust into her mouth.
Delilah flipped her off right before Ruby sailed back into the room, hugging a notebook to her chest. As she sat back down, she kept the book under the table and slowly opened it, shoulders hunched. Delilah didn’t try to take it out of her hands. It was hers, and Delilah knew better than anyone how much the art you did as a kid—whether it be drawings or photographs or songs—felt like spilling the contents of your heart out into the world. Hell, it still felt like that as a grown-up.
She leaned closer to the girl, tilting her head to see the drawings as Ruby flipped the pages in her lap. Black-and-white sketches filled each page. Plants, flowers, tea mugs and stacks of books, candles and cats and planets. Then the faces started—Claire, Josh, Iris, Astrid, younger girls who must’ve been her friends from school, her own face in various expressions, everything from smiling to despairing to distorted, a whole range of emotions and feelings and thoughts.
“These are great,” Delilah said, her voice low and just for Ruby. She nudged her shoulder with her own, coaxing a proud smile out of the girl.
“Thank you,” Ruby said softly, then looked up at Delilah. “Can you teach me about photography?”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Like, lighting and framing and . . . everything. I love your photos.”
Delilah tilted her head. “You’ve seen my photos?”
The girl’s blush deepened. Delilah shot a glance at Claire, but the other woman just shrugged.
“I . . . um . . .” Ruby said. She looked suddenly scared, more than just nervous.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Delilah said. “Photos are meant to be seen.”
Ruby blew out a breath, nodded. “Well . . . after Aunt Astrid’s brunch, I looked you up on my laptop and I found your Instagram.”
“Ah.”
“Your account is amazing.”
“You have an Instagram?” Iris asked.
Delilah tilted her head at her. “I’m a photographer. Of course I have one.”
A purely evil grin spread over Iris’s mouth, and she picked up her phone.
Oh god. Delilah wasn’t ashamed of her Instagram account. It was pretty much a must for any visual artist these days. She just wasn’t prepared for the whole of Bright Falls to be scrolling through her photos. Some of them were pretty raw, and the last people she’d considered when she posted them were Astrid and her coven. Just the thought of sitting here while Iris Kelly—and inevitably, Claire Sutherland—dug into her art made her want to puke.
“Hey, you know what?” she said to Ruby. “The light outside is perfect right now. Want me to show you a few tips for taking photos with a phone?”
Ruby’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t have a phone yet.”
“But you will,” Claire said, holding her water glass between two hands.
“When?” Ruby said, her posture going straight.
Claire laughed. “Someday.”
“Ugh, you’re the worst.”
“I love you too,” Claire said, eyes shining at her daughter.
“Oh my god,” Iris said, eyes bugging out on her phone. “You have two hundred thousand followers?”
“And that’s our cue,” Delilah said, then waved her own phone at Ruby. “What do you say?”
“Okay, yeah,” Ruby said, grabbing her notebook and leading the way through the living room toward the back porch.
“Holy shit,” Delilah heard Iris say behind her. “Claire, look at this.”
Anxiety spiked in her chest, and she hurried out the door. She wasn’t sure if that was a good holy shit or a bad one, but either way, she didn’t want to hear what Claire had to say about her photos at all.
Outside, the air was cool and damp, the sun just starting to sink, creating a twilight-lavender glow that was perfect for a certain type of photo. Delilah and Ruby went into the backyard, the grass a little long and the flower beds a little weedy, but there was a hammock strung between two maple trees, a strand of colored lights hung along the porch railing that could’ve been left over from Christmas or could’ve been a regular fixture. Either way, the yard was charming. Imperfect. It was lived-in and homey, the kind of backyard Delilah remembered from her and her father’s house in Seattle, but which she’d never had at Wisteria House.
“Okay,” she said to Ruby, once she’d taken a deep breath to calm her stomach. “Look around. See if anything catches your eye.”
Ruby frowned at her. “Like what?”
“Anything. Photography isn’t so different from drawing. When you go to do a sketch, you either see something interesting you want to draw, or you think of something interesting in your mind, right?”
Ruby nodded.
“Same thing with photographs. You see something and you want to capture it in a new way, a way only you can see it, and then show that to the world.”
Ruby’s frown deepened, but it was more a look of curiosity and thought than confusion. She glanced around her yard, then started walking through the grass slowly, her notebook still tucked against her chest. Delilah let her roam, watching the girl search through her tiny world.
“This,” Ruby said, stopping at a stone birdbath in the corner of the yard. It was dingy, full of stagnated water and dead leaves, but right in the center a single white flower floated. Delilah couldn’t tell what flower it was, some sort of weed probably, but the effect of a little life hovering above death . . . well, it was striking.
“Perfect,” Delilah said, smiling at Ruby, then handed the girl her phone, already open to the camera app. “Let’s see what you got.”
Ruby took it and set her notebook in the grass, her expression uncertain, but after a few minutes of staring and head tilting, she got to work. It took a while. The girl was meticulous, careful, experimenting and then shaking her head softly when what she saw in the photo didn’t match what she wanted in her head. Finally, she looked up and handed the phone back to Delilah.
Scrolling through her images, Delilah smiled. “These are good. I like your point of view here.” She held out the phone so Ruby could see the birdbath’s edge, the viewer nearly eye level with the dirty water, the flower the only thing in focus.