One was a photographer I’d assisted twice in the past month. The other had art directed a shoot René sent me on last week.
Not strangers.
Witnesses.
No one acknowledged me when I arrived.
Accidental or not, it felt planned.
For a moment, I thought I was early. Or late. Or in the wrong room.
Then I saw the images.
Mounted in a loose line along the far wall.
Not framed. Not precious. Just there.
My work.
My stomach dropped so fast it felt like missing a step on a staircase.
He hadn’t told me this was about me.
I stood in front of them and felt something in my chest tighten — not pride, not fear, but a strange, hollow clarity.
This wasn’t a viewing.
This was an autopsy.
My wounds were on display.
They didn’t look like my other work.
They weren’t clean. They weren’t impressive. They weren’t trying to prove anything.
A missed hand on the métro.
The soup night stairs.
My own reflection blurred in glass.
Herlaughing.
And then — like a final, deliberate cruelty — Dominic.
Not posed. Not aware of the camera. Just him, mid-sentence, mouth open in a smile like he’d forgotten was there with my camera. That I could see him.
The image punched the air out of my lungs.
I hadn’t even remembered adding it.
Or maybe I had, and I just hadn’t wanted to admit what it meant.
They looked… human.
Uncomfortable. Incomplete. Like they’d been taken by someone who hadn’t known what she was doing and hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise.
René didn’t speak for a long time.
