“Nell.”
She turns back.
“What was your question?” I rest my hand on the doorknob. “The other day during class, you asked me if I still think about the people I’ve photographed. You were about to ask me something else.”
“I’ve been thinking about your work.” She wraps her arms around her waist. “And I was wondering how you deal with all the horrible things that happened to those people. If they haunt you, why do you go back?”
It’s a question I can never fully answer. But for her, I try.
“I believe in what I do. What I did. So many people live in a hell that needs to be seen before anything can be done about it. And a photograph turns the abstract into a concrete form. It makes things real. Sometimes it feels like my work is a drop of water falling into an ocean, but other times I’ve felt the impact like an earthquake. That’s why I kept going back.”
She plucks at the sleeves of her robe. “What about your less noble reasons?”
Unease crawls up my chest. “I’ve got those too.”
“What are they?”
I’d liked her bluntness at first. Now, not so much. I especially don’t like how tempted I am to tell her the truth, as if I won’t need to explain. As if she’ll just understand.
“It’s control, right?” Nell steps closer. “And a rush.”
My heart hits my ribcage. Her gray eyes are watchful and cautious.
“You go into the worst, most dangerous conflicts in the world, but the energy of it is addictive. And you have total control over your camera and what you choose to focus on. You want to create something ordered out of chaos. Something permanent. You want to make your mark on…on life.”
I can’t respond. A dark coil begins to unwind inside me, like a snake rousing from a deep sleep.
“Good night, Nell.” Turning away, I push open the bedroom door.
Her footsteps clatter on the old wooden stairs. I shut the door behind me.
My wariness deepens. It’s not that I can’t see the little girl in her anymore.
It’s that the little girl in her is gone.
CHAPTER 10
Nell
Moonlight flickers across my bedroom ceiling. Shadows from the oak tree outside the window spread over my print of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The shapes of the branches mirror the twisting cypress tree and curl around the bright stars.
Two hours after saying good night to Darius, I still can’t sleep. A chair scrapes the floor of the room below mine. My breath is shallow. Something is shifting inside me, as if broken pieces are trying to fit together.
Once upon a time, I’d thought Darius’s war photography career was exciting, daring, and adventurous. For me, he’s always been the only person in the world who has such ironclad courage. But now, while so many nuances of his work have become unfathomable, I know the urge to feel alive, to make sense of chaos, to find control when you have none.
Except I’ve never found a way to do it. Instead, I live with the fear that I’ll slip through the world, through my own life, without having an impact on anything or anyone. That my fate is to be invisible.
But he changes what people see. How they see. Even in captivity without his camera, he’d known how to survive and escape. To channel his instincts into taking control of a situation where anyone would think he had none.
What drove him to find a way to do that? Based on the little I know, it sounds as if his father was a tyrant, so Darius might have had few choices and control over his life…until he broke away.
Since sleep eludes me, I get out of bed and pull on my robe and slippers. I open the attic window and tuck my drawing notebook under my arm. Looping a battery-powered lantern over my arm, I climb out the window onto an oak branch that stretches to the roof. The cold night air feels good against my heated skin.
Balancing carefully, I make my way over the ridge to the valley tucked between two parts of the gabled roof. I’d discovered this secret hideaway during one of my mother’s dark episodes, when her screams had driven me out of the window in search of escape. I’d been eight, and ever since, this part of the roof has been my refuge. Blanketed by the sky, hidden from view, nothing can touch me here. For a while, at least.
I settle against the sloping wall of shingles and open my book. By the light of the lantern, I sketch Winsome Swift in a thunderstorm, her hair swirling around her, her arms outstretched to capture the lightning bolts sparking from the dark, roiling sky. I draw wind-lashed trees, flooded riverbanks, pools of rainwater. A heavy cushion of storm clouds hovering over the turmoil.
My pencil on the page, I look up at the sky. Stars glint through a misty veil. The moon hangs low on the horizon, thin and translucent.
Darius in his cell. His body trapped. His mind sharp and forceful. Always seeking escape.
Darius across at the table, his dark eyes serious on mine. Not just looking at me, but seeing me. Lifting his hand to stroke my hair.
I’d almost held my breath, stunned by how badly I’d wanted to feel the weight of his hand on my head. And then when he’d dropped his arm back to his side without touching me, my disappointment had felt like a blade.
I can’t remember the last time another person touched me, or I touched them. My father pats my shoulder sometimes, but that’s it. We no longer hug each other or express affection physically. When my mother was alive, he’d keep me close, putting his arm around me or taking my hand, as if to assure me silently that everything would be okay, he would protect me, we were together.
But her death and then the institution carved a distance between us that neither of us has ever breached.
Maybe it’s the same with Darius. Did his captivity deaden his desire to touch another person or did he crave it like a drug? What did he do when he came back? Who did he touch?
The questions spike my curiosity, though of course, the answers are none of my business.
On Monday morning, I wait for him in the kitchen after I’ve gotten ready for school. He comes down the stairs, dressed in a charcoal-colored suit and tie that make him look like a Wall Street executive rather than a high-school teacher. Or a war photographer.
“Not walking to school today?” he asks.
“I figured it’d be easier to just go with you.” I inhale the scent that I’ve come to associate with him—citrus and spice. “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” He holds the door open for me, and we walk out to his SUV.
My father was pleased when I told him I’d start riding with Darius in the morning. As I’d intended, he’d seen it as a step toward my acceptance, or at least tolerance, of Darius living with us. It’s true that I’m starting to get used to him being around, though I’m not entirely sure I like it. He still makes me feel strange and off-balance, as if my carefully constructed world isn’t as secure as I think.
In the car, I sit close to the passenger side door with my arms crossed. Even in our separate seats, he takes up more room than he should. He shifts the car into first and starts toward school. The wheel slides easily under his palms, and the flick of his fingers on the signal is deft and assured. His sleeve rides up to reveal a plain watch strapped to his strong wrist.