Only Ever You (6 page)

What would he say about Sophia’s problems at school? Would he think she was being overly anxious about this, too? She wished he had done the drop-off this morning so Mrs. Belmar could have spoken to him directly. Of course, she probably would have chosen to talk to Jill anyway; a child’s problems were always assumed to be the mother’s responsibility, not the father’s.

Jill sped as fast as she dared on the back roads, but traffic ground to a halt, as usual, on Route 28. Stop and start, and then an accident on the bridge, and everyone trundled into one lane crawling past an ambulance and police cars. The river was a sluggish ribbon of dull pewter under a gray sky. She called Tania but it went straight to voice mail. “Hey, it’s me. I’m running very late and we’ve got a client at nine—could you keep her entertained until I get there?” She hung up and called the studio, asking the same of their young receptionist, Kyle.

She took back streets off Washington Boulevard, but still pulled up over ten minutes late at the studio, a narrow storefront in Point Breeze. A large silver Volvo hogged two parking spaces out front. Jill had to drive a block farther down before she found a spot. She grabbed her bag and raced back up the street, just as the rain, which had been threatening all morning, suddenly fell. She held her purse over her head, running faster.

Looking through the front window, she could see Kyle talking to someone on the phone. He hung up as Jill pushed open the door, bell jangling.

“Is Tania here?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Great, just great,” Jill muttered, brushing water off her clothes. Kyle stared at her blankly. He didn’t seem to understand sarcasm. Early twentysomething, he was messy and not particularly self-directed. Still, he accepted minimum wage, which was all she could afford to pay, and more or less remembered to do the little required of him.

“I gave her tea,” he said in a low voice, nodding toward the low-slung sofa and chairs across from the front counter that served as a waiting area, where Jill’s first client of the day sat flipping through magazines on the coffee table while trying to entertain a fussy baby sitting in a carrier next to her. She was a small, plump, fortyish white woman with thin, mouse-brown hair, and she had a small, plump white baby with thin, mouse-brown hair. They wore matching oversize bright orange sweaters embroidered with pumpkins. The baby gnawed on a chubby hand, face and eyes red from a recent bout of tears.

“She’s teething,” the woman said in an accusatory tone when Jill apologized for being late. “If I’d gotten the appointment I wanted a month ago, like I tried, then we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“We’ll just have to do our best to distract her,” Jill said, trying a bright smile that the other woman didn’t return. Jill led them down a hall to the back of the building and the actual studio, which she’d created by knocking the walls down between several small rooms to create one large space with a white backdrop, various props, large lights, and multiple cameras. They were offering a special on fall portraits right now—she’d hauled in some hay bales and pumpkins. A degree in art, but this was how she spent most of her time, the dream of being the next Sally Mann or Annie Leibovitz taking a backseat to the need to pay for rent and equipment. Family portraits and weddings supported the studio; the other photography, the art photography and the volunteer photography that were her passions, had to come second.

Over the course of an interminable hour, she took more than a hundred photos of the little girl. Baby alone, baby with pumpkins as props, and baby with mother. In a few shots the child actually smiled. A grumpy Madonna and Child commemorating a pagan holiday.

The woman seemed slightly less annoyed at the end of the photo shoot than she had been at the beginning. “I guess at least one of these will work,” she conceded when Jill let her see the digital proofs. “Her father will probably like it.” The baby squawked, sounding just as enthused, and Jill managed a faint smile. The woman would fuss over the price. As soon as she left she’d be on her cell phone complaining that she should have taken her child to a portrait studio at the mall.

She hustled the woman and child back out to the front of the studio, just as Tania walked out of the door of the production and developing room, followed by a huge, muscular white man with a tangled mass of dirty auburn hair and matching beard. Dressed head to toe in black and wearing mirrored sunglasses, he hoisted a backpack, also in black, onto his shoulder. With her blue-streaked blond hair and sparkly nose stud, wearing a flowing, post-millennial hippie skirt, Tania looked like a latter-day flower child, and combined aromas of patchouli and pot drifted after her. The client looked askance, clutching her child’s baby carrier close as she passed them in the lobby, hustling out the door to the Volvo, as if one of them planned to snatch her child. Kyle stared unabashedly, mouth hanging slightly open. Jill realized she’d crossed her arms, so she let them fall to her sides, trying not to look like the mother who’d waited up all night for her rebellious teen daughter. What the client didn’t know was that underneath her hippie-dippie exterior and beyond her terrible taste in men, Tania was a great photographer. And while Jill could find another photographer, Tania was also a longtime friend.

Not that the bonds of friendship didn’t have their limits. “You must be Tania’s boyfriend,” she said, trying to be civil and struggling to remember the name of this latest romantic partner.

“Oh, yeah,” Tania said, sweeping an arm toward the guy, who stood in the center of the lobby, arms crossed over his massive chest. “This is Leo.”

The man’s beard dipped, which might have been a nod. “Nice to meet you, Leo.” Jill extended her hand, and he stared at it for a second before giving it a limp shake. He had a small but vicious-looking skull and crossbones tattooed on the side of his neck. “Leo dropped me off,” Tania said. Standing on tiptoe to give him a lingering kiss, she murmured, “See you later” in a voice best left in the bedroom.

To avoid watching the good-bye, Jill focused on collecting the mail, which Kyle had left scattered on the front counter as usual. She sorted through it, stiffening slightly when she saw her mother’s familiar scrawl on an envelope. The letter had been opened, though since it had “Jillian Lassiter Photography” on the envelope maybe Kyle had thought it was business correspondence. Not completely off base since it was undoubtedly a request for money. She shoved it into her pocket, unread, looking up when she heard the door close. Jill watched Leo sauntering off toward an old car before she followed Tania back down the hall to the production room. “Nice of you to show up.”

“Don’t be a bitch. I sent you a text, didn’t you get it?”

“No.” Jill double-checked her cell phone before holding it out for her friend and partner’s scrutiny.

“Really? I wonder what happened.”

“Let me guess—you were still in bed and a little distracted?”

“Do I detect a note of jealousy?” Tania said with a laugh. She grabbed Jill’s arm and pulled her into what they sometimes still referred to as the darkroom, though now it was mostly filled with computer equipment to edit and print photos. “Isn’t he hot?”

“Does this one have a job?” Tania’s last boyfriend had been a professional moocher.

“Jesus, Jill!”

“Does he?”

“Yes, he has a job. God, you’re like an old woman sometimes.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know—computers and shit like that.” She waved airily as if the details didn’t matter. “He’s good with his hands.”

“Oh, I saw that,” Jill said.

Tania sneered. “What’s the matter? Too little action in snooze-urbia?”

Jill rolled her eyes. From the day they’d become friends, fifteen years ago when both were freshman art majors at Carnegie Mellon, Tania had never missed an opportunity to comment negatively on suburban living, which she’d never actually experienced firsthand. She and Jill had bonded not only over a shared passion for photography, but also over being Pittsburgh transplants who’d been raised in larger cities by unstable mothers.

For all her criticisms of “Stepford living,” Tania wanted the stability of this studio just as much as Jill, and it wouldn’t exist at all if it hadn’t been subsidized by suburban David’s bourgeois job. “Please tell me you haven’t moved in with this guy,” she said as Tania sat down at one of the desktops to download shots she’d taken at a recent wedding.

“Not yet.” Tania looked uncomfortable. “But we’re talking about it.” She moved an average of once every year and a half, always convinced that a new apartment or, better yet, a new man’s apartment, would bring her good luck. Jill was pleasantly surprised that it hadn’t already happened with her latest lover.

“I think it’s great you’re waiting, taking your time.”

Tania shot her a look, then sighed. “Actually, he still lives with his mother.”

“He has a mother?” Jill blurted, adding hastily at Tania’s offended look, “Sorry, it’s just, he seems so, well, so
independent
.”

“Everyone has a mother, Jill. He’s very attached to his.”

“And that isn’t a good thing?”

“It’s a little Norman Bates for me—his mother’s a nut.” Tania circled a finger near her ear. “I’ve got one of those already. I don’t need a matched set.”

Jill laughed, but couldn’t stop the slight wince, glad that Tania didn’t see. Did she still talk to her mother? The letter from Jill’s own mother seemed to throb in her pocket. She wouldn’t answer it, she’d stopped answering them some time ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.

“Anyway, he’s getting his own place soon,” Tania said, pulling Jill’s attention back. “I think he could be long-term. He just gets me, you know? And he’s into kids, too. You know how much I love kids.”

“You’re great with Sophia,” Jill said, trying to hide what she really felt at the thought of flighty Tania becoming a mother. At least she wasn’t lying; Tania
was
fantastic with Sophia, but that was very different from having a child to care for 24/7.

She and Tania reviewed the photos of the wedding, which they’d shot a week ago. A pretty young bride and her baby-faced groom, both of them looking so happy it was almost painful. There was so much promise in wedding photos. She wished she could freeze the moment, keep the couple just as happy as they were in the photos. But life would dim that light in their eyes. How long would it be before they figured out there was no happily ever after?

Where had that come from? Jill wasn’t unhappy, not really. She turned away, shaking off the blues. “Let’s get them in here to review the proofs.” She gathered up prints from a session a few days before, black-and-whites of a man and woman holding an incredibly small infant in a hospital room, his eyes closed in every shot, his features perfect.

“Do you want me to mail those?” Tania offered, looking over her shoulder.

“No thanks, I’m going to drop them off next week.” She never mailed these photos; she always delivered them personally. There were multiple prints and after a moment Jill discarded one in which the mother had started crying. Her grief was too raw, too painful—they wouldn’t like that one. Jill blinked back sudden tears of her own, quickly gathering the photos together. She’d done so many sessions like this one, but they still moved her.

She searched the top desk drawer for the hidden place at the back where they kept the key to the large supply cabinet in the corner of the room, but it wasn’t there. “Did you take the key?”

“It’s probably in the door,” Tania said, absorbed in sorting through the wedding proofs.

Jill turned to look at the cabinet, at the key sitting there. She swallowed hard, feeling more annoyance with Tania—always running late and now she couldn’t even be bothered to hide the key? With a back door that opened on to an unlit alleyway, the studio was vulnerable to thieves. They’d had a break-in the first month after opening. Jill had installed a security camera outside, but when the camera got stolen it wasn’t cost-effective to replace it. Instead she set up motion-sensor security lights, which were hit or miss, and installed a deadbolt on the back door. She knew that wasn’t enough, so she locked up everything of value inside. “Please remember to put the key away, okay? We don’t want our stuff stolen.”

“I’m not the one who left it out,” Tania said, voice huffy. “Why do you always blame me for things?”

Because you’re irresponsible, Jill thought. “I wish Kyle would put things back where they go.”

“Kyle?” Tania gave her a puzzled look. “He doesn’t touch this room, remember? You told him to focus only on the front desk and scheduling.”

Jill fingered the key still sitting in the lock. Had she forgotten to put it back last night? She was usually so careful. “Were you in here yesterday afternoon?”

Tania looked up. “I wasn’t here at all yesterday. I had the Nicholson party to shoot. You were the only one here, remember?” She gave Jill a smug look, implicit in her tone the fact that Jill couldn’t own up to her own mistakes.

“I must have forgotten to put it away,” Jill said, more to thwart Tania’s sense of satisfaction than because she really believed it. Had she been so distracted that she didn’t remember? Weird. Still puzzling, Jill opened the door and cried out as a tripod tumbled forward, slamming into her. It slid off her and she caught it before it hit the floor. “What the hell?”

Tania grabbed it from her. “Are you okay?”

Jill rubbed her shoulder and collarbone. “Yeah, just a little bruised.” The cabinet was in disarray—boxes of photos shuffled through, cameras and other equipment obviously moved, which was how that top-heavy tripod, which was usually tucked against the back of one of the vertical shelves, had fallen out. “Someone ransacked this.”

“Well it wasn’t me,” Tania said quickly. “It must have been Kyle.”

“You just said this room is limited to you and me—so why would he even come in here?”

He hadn’t. Once summoned, Kyle stood in the office doorway and swore up and down that he hadn’t been in the back of the building “in, like, over a month, maybe more.”

“Maybe we had a break-in!” he suggested, suddenly animated. “Do you want me to call the cops?”