The hallway stretches dark in both directions. The house ticks and groans around me. Pipes, rain on the roof, the furnace cycling on. Normal sounds. The sounds of a house that's held the two of us for eight years, and some nights that's enough and some nights the quiet swallows everything.
I let myself think her name.Ellie.I wait for the guilt, for the familiar weight of Maren's absence to push the name back into the locked drawer with the ring and the handkerchief.
It doesn't come.
What comes instead is the scent-memory. Cedar and old paper and vanilla—the library soaked into her skin, the books she touches, shelves and carries. And underneath, the warm note I caught yesterday when I stayed too close for too long, the one I keep telling myself I can't name.
Chapter 3
Ellie
Holly has twelve kids, three cameras, and the full attention of every person in the room. She circles the three folding tables I set up this morning, crouching beside each station, adjusting a kid's grip on the camera or tilting a lens toward the window light while twelve faces watch her like she's performing magic.
Three cameras between twelve kids. I told Holly it wouldn't work when she pitched the workshop. She told me the cameras weren't the point. She handed me a supply list and a timeline and said, "Trust me, Ellie. I've worked with less." I trusted her. I also printed a sign-up rotation and laminated it, because trusting Holly doesn't mean abandoning logistics.
Lily's in the front row. She has her notebook open and she's sketching the camera angles Holly demonstrates, labeling them in handwriting so neat it looks typeset.
Colt sits in the back row with a paperback he hasn't turned in twenty minutes.
I know because I've noticed. The book rests open in his lap, spine cracked at the same page he landed on when he sat down,and his reading glasses have slid to the middle of his nose. He pushes them up. They slide. He forgets.
The library door opens and Rex ducks through it carrying a plastic bag. He crosses to Holly's station and holds up the bag.
"Memory cards," he says. "Picked up the last three at the shop on Fifth."
Holly takes the bag, checks the contents. Rex stays by the table, watching her work, and Holly lifts the camera and catches him before he notices. He hears the shutter and shakes his head.
"You could warn a guy. So I can give you my best side."
She doesn't look up from the viewfinder. "Where's the fun in that?"
She turns back to the kids without waiting for his response. Rex kisses the top of Holly's head on his way out and tells her to call if she needs anything. Holly waves him off without breaking stride, while I rearrange the supply shelf and pretend I'm not jealous of what they have. I am, though. Every time I see them together I am.
The workshop moves into free shooting. Holly sends the kids to different corners of the library with instructions to photograph something that surprises them, and the room fills with the commotion of twelve pairs of sneakers scattering across hardwood.Nina's at the far table helping a boy figure out the zoom, her belly pressed against the table edge, patient and unhurried.Lily pairs up with a younger orc girl named Dani, she's maybe nine, with deep green skin and a braid thick enough to use as a rope. Dani holds the camera with both hands and Lily adjusts her grip, showing her how to tuck her elbows in to keep it steady.
Two boys from the middle school drift toward Dani's station. I see it coming before they open their mouths.
"Did your dad's tusks scratch the camera?" The taller one says it loud enough for the table to hear, quiet enough that Holly, across the room, doesn't catch it.
Dani's shoulders pull inward. She lowers the camera to her lap.
Lily's head snaps up. Her jaw sets—her father's jaw, the same hard line—and her mouth opens.
The second boy leans in. "Why do freaks get to use the good cameras anyway?"
I'm across the room before I register moving. In the back row, I hear Colt's book hit the chair. But I'm already between the boys and Dani before he gets to his feet.
"I need you both to look at me."
They look. The taller one's smirk falters because my face doesn't match the cardigan.
"I know exactly what you sound like right now," I say. "You sound like the adults who taught you those words. The ones who call people freaks at the dinner table. And you're repeating it, and right now you get to decide if that's who you want to be." I hold the taller boy's gaze until he drops it. "Because the men who talk like that? They don't stop at words. They put flyers on community boards and vote to cut funding for programs like this one, and they do it with a smile, and twenty years from now their kids don't call them on holidays. That's the road. You're on the first mile of it. Turn around and be better."
The shorter boy goes red. He stares at his shoes.
"You can leave the workshop," I say. "Or you can sit down, pick up a camera, and be better than what I just heard. Those are your choices."
They leave, muttering something I can't hear. The door closes behind them and the library goes quiet.
