“That’s how I feel about my camera,” Jackie says. She dips the photo into a different bin of liquid, sloshing it around a bit. “The lens is like a filter that helps me see things in a new light.”
Claire keeps following the strings of photos hanging all around. “You really like flowers.”
“I’m terrible at keeping them alive, but I love to photograph them. My father is a florist. He doesn’t talk much, but he’ll talk about plants,” Jackie says drily. She puts the photo into a third bin and carries it to the sink. “He used to tell me the hidden meanings behind all of them.”
“Like acacias?” Claire says. “Your tattoo. Do they mean something special?”
Jackie doesn’t answer for a minute. She seems to be washing the photo under the running tap, and Claire has already accepted that her question won’t be answered when the faucet turns off.
“They mean hidden love,” Jackie says quietly. Her back is to Claire. Her voice sounds strange. “Concealed emotions.”
Jackie clips the photo up to dry with the rest. It drips slowly onto the concrete floor, leaving dark patches near Jackie’s feet that Claire can see even in the dim red light.
“You said you got the tattoo to remind you of something,” Claire says.
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Jackie turns around, drying her hands methodically on a towel. Her eyes are fixed on it, her brow furrowed. “You have a way of getting things out of me.”
“I do?”
“Yes. Without even trying, apparently,” Jackie says. She tosses the towel onto the edge of the sink. “I think I’d tell you just about anything, if you asked.”
Claire wishes above all else that she knew what to ask right now. Her mind has gone blank. She wants to know everything about Jackie, any crumb that she can find, and now when she might actually open up Claire can’t come up with a single thing to say.
“Does the tattoo have to do with the man you loved?” Claire blurts.
Jackie makes a noise. It’s almost like a laugh, but there’s something else to it that Claire can’t figure out. “Right. Theman.”
It’s obvious that it was the wrong question to ask. It’s as if an invisible shutter has slammed down between them, and Claire’s stomach sinks. “Sorry. I just—you said hidden love, and I thought—”
“I didn’t get it for a man,” Jackie says. She’s tracing over the tattoo with her fingers, brushing over the lines of the acacia branch without needing to look. Her eyes are fixed somewhere to the right of Claire, and totally unreadable—the red light is casting strangely over her features, obscuring some details and sharpening others. She looks like one of her own photographs come to life. Light and shadow.
It all feels significant, and Claire isn’t sure why. She takes a step towards Jackie, but stops when her hip hits one of the tables. The mystery liquid splashes up, leaving spots on Claire’s dress, and Claire couldn’t care less about possible stains.
It seems to snap Jackie out of her strange mood. She straightens up, dropping her arms and stepping out of the direct path of the light. Her face falls into darkness as she shakes her head a little and heads towards the stairs, slipping past Claire in a wave of herbal shampoo.
“Not that it matters,” Jackie says. “That’s all over, now, isn’t it?”
“Jackie,” Claire says, but without a follow-up question she’s left blinking in Jackie’s wake as she climbs the stairs two at a time.
“Are you hungry?” Jackie calls loudly, disappearing into the upstairs hall. “I’m famished.”
In the light of day, it’s as if their conversation never happened. Jackie is her usual self. The rest of the afternoon passes over pizza and sodas, and Claire tries to set aside the strangeness in the darkroom.
It’s startling, how quickly it all becomes a new norm. Jackie’s discomfort with the subterfuge of their friendship is clear for the first few days after Memorial Day, but eventually they both slip into the habit—she gives Claire a spare key so that she can come straight inside rather than knocking, to reduce the likelihood ofbeing spied on. If Jackie phones the house, she only does so when Pete isn’t home. The ruse of it all becomes second nature.
Claire’s mother is wrong. She has to be. If lying to Pete is what it takes to keep this, then she’ll do it happily.
Perhaps Jackie is changing her, like Pete says. Maybe it’s for the better.
Chapter 12
Something Claire doesn’t ever expect when she knocks on Jackie’s door is for her to already have a visitor.
Jackie is a solitary person, Claire has learned, whether by accident or design. She seems to have almost no visitors besides Claire. When Claire knocks on the door one very normal Tuesday and it comes with a very loud, verymalelaugh booming over the fence from Jackie’s backyard, it seems so out of the ordinary that Claire wonders if she’s imagined it until she sees a second, much smaller car next to Jackie’s in the driveway. A small white Volvo. It’s older than Jackie’s Mustang, but in decent condition.
“Claire?” Jackie’s voice shouts. Claire can only just hear the words. “If that’s you, we’re around back!”
Claire is long past being nervous about visiting Jackie, but the introduction of someone new—a man, no less—has her stomach in knots. But she wants to see her friend. In the end, she has no choice but to make her way around the side of the house to the fence gate, beyond which is a yard Claire hasn’t yet stepped foot in.
