That was two.
Her hands stayed in her lap.
A mother came in next, pushing the door open with her hip because she had a toddler on the other arm. The toddler was maybe two, in a sunhat that had slipped down over one eye, and a small striped shirt, and she was clearly unhappy about the hat. The mother got into line, shifted the toddler onto her hip, and without looking, reached up and adjusted the brim with one hand, tipping it back off the little girl’s eye so she could see again. The toddler stopped fussing and stuck her fist in her mouth.
Three.
Melissa’s eye did the thing. The automatic framing and the geometry of it. The hand coming down, the hat tipping back, the toddler’s face emerging into the light of the window, the mother’s shoulder making a strong diagonal across the frame. She could see the shot. She could also see, already, where she would crop it.
She did not lift the camera.
She sat with the pressure of wanting to and did not lift it.
Her coffee was getting cold. She took a sip anyway. The mother ordered something iced and moved to the pickup side of the counter. The toddler started fussing again about something new. The mother adjusted her. The hat didn’t move this time.
The door kept opening. Customers came and went. The afternoon assembled itself out of small, repeated gestures, the way afternoons in small towns always did. Jan poured. Sally argued. Somebody ordered a muffin. Somebody’s dog, tied to the railing out front, barked once and then settled. An older man in a Coast Guard cap sat at the counter and Jan set a mug down in front of him without being asked.
Melissa wondered if the man knew Clint. Everyone with that cap around here probably did. She wondered whether Clint had sat at this counter at some point in the last three years and ordered coffee from Jan without saying hello. Probably. It was the kind of small, careful contact Clint was good at. Being in a place without really being in it.
She knew that trick. She had been working that trick for two years.
Clint had done the harder thing yesterday morning. He had stood in the courtyard and admitted he was hiding. So had she.
Maybe this was the next part. Sitting in a room. Learning the light again. Letting her eye move without asking her hands to follow.
Melissa watched all of it.
She thought, distantly, this is what I used to do.
The seeing. Before a camera ever came up to her face, there had been this. The long, quiet absorption. Learning a room the way you learned a song, figuring out the beats, the pauses, and the place the unexpected sound came from. She’d forgotten how much of her work used to happen before the shutter ever moved.
After the hurricane, she’d decided she’d lost her eye. She had believed that for two years. But the truth was, she’d only stopped letting herself use it.
She looked at the mother adjusting her toddler’s hat, at Jan’s absent humming, and Sally’s frown aimed at her own spreadsheet.
I’m still here.
Her hands were in her lap. Her camera was in the bag. The shutter was not moving.
But her eye was working again.
She stayed until her coffee was completely cold and the light in the window had shifted two inches along the floor. Jan came by and asked if she wanted a warm-up. Melissa said no thank you and smiled, and Jan smiled back, and went on.
Melissa stood. She put her bag over her shoulder. She left a tip on the table, two crumpled dollars and the change from her coffee, the way Emily always did.
She stopped at the bulletin board on her way out. The community board. Missing cat flyers, a guitar lesson ad, a Beacon Lights Boat Parade call for volunteers, and a hand-drawn poster for an open mic at the Sandpiper. Somebody’s hand had drawn a small careful star next to the open mic poster in blue ballpoint. A single star, with no explanation around it.
She looked at it for a moment, then pushed through the door.
Outside, the sun was warm on her shoulders. She walked a block before she realized she was crying. Not sad tears. More like a welcomed release. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist and kept walking.
At the crosswalk on Main she reached into her bag. Her fingers found the body of the camera and stayed there. Cool metal, familiar grip, the edge of the strap she had replaced once in a hotel room in Louisiana.
She held it there for a few seconds. Then she let go and kept walking home, her hand swinging free at her side.
Chapter 10
Downtown Starlight Shores on a Tuesday morning looked like a town that had forgotten anyone was watching.
