He shrugged. “I get a lot of Silicon Valley tech guys who want to learn photography. They’re high maintenance but they can afford to pay well. But that’s why I like to bring help. Some of the folks who come are experienced photographers who just use the workshops as an excuse to go shoot in new places, but I always get a few who don’t even know how to use their cameras. So the teaching part is pretty hands-on, and it helps a lot to have a second person. Gros Morne is remote, too. There’d be some hiking in, maybe an overnight at a fjord. My concern is that if anything comes up, like someone gets injured, I need someone who can keep the workshop running while I take the person to the hospital. Not that it’s likely, but I know from experience that it’s not wise to do this alone.”
“I know nothing about night photography.”
“Fair enough. So have you heard of these things called f-stop and ISO?”
“Very funny.”
“That’s my point. You’re a great photographer. The rest are just tricks and details that I could explain to you on the way. Everyone in the workshop is flying in to Deer Lake on Monday, and I was going to drive out there Sunday after the wedding. I could show you the basics on Sunday night.”
For a moment, she considered it. She could really use the money, and the workshop sounded fun. But going would also mean being with Ren for an entire week, hiking trails and wandering forests by his side.
“I don’t know,” she began. “I don’t know if I can get time off.”
“You have a day or so decide,” he said. “But it would be a huge help.” He smiled that heartbreaking smile, and she hated him for a moment.
“I think I have to say no. I’m not sure if my work would even?—”
“Take a day to think about it. Please.”
She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
When she got back to her hotel room, Sarah lay in her bed for a long time. It was painful to see him again, painful to contemplate a whole week with him, painful to say no. She got up and walked to her window and looked at the stars scattered across the night sky, stunning and endless in the clear night. There was a small plush armchair in her hotel room, so she pulled it close to the window and looked outside for a long time, waiting for the stars to give her answers that they didn’t have.
10
SATURDAY
Sarah spentSaturday morning driving the long route home to pick up her mother for the wedding festivities later that day. Her mother had insisted she didn’t want to spend more than one night at a hotel because she couldn’t ‘abandon her birds’ for any longer; Maureen had inherited two small parakeets from an elderly neighbor, and they provided a constant focal point for her general anxiety about leaving her house. This meant that Sarah would be driving an hour and a half round-trip on Saturday morning to pick up her mother for the wedding and then would do the same on Sunday to take her mother home again. She had agreed to this plan because she knew that her mother would otherwise skip the wedding entirely and sit at home for the weekend, fretting and second-guessing her decision not to attend.
When Sarah pulled up to the small driveway of her childhood home and knocked on the door, she found her mother already waiting in her small kitchen, dressed in a silvery peach church dress.
“Lovely dress!” Sarah had developed her ‘bright and cheerful’ voice in her teen years when dealing with the freight train of her mother’s anxiety, and she still pulled it out every time they began a conversation.
“Well, I just don’t know,” Maureen said, smoothing the skirt down.
“It’s perfect.”
“I haven’t been to a wedding in so long. My last wedding was your wedding.”
“It’s going to be a lot of fun. Paul loves you.”
“Is this a formal wedding? The invitation didn’t say. You know, some people have very informal weddings now.”
“I think the dress is just right.”
“Well, it’s the only one I have.”
“And it’s perfect.” Sarah loaded up her mother’s small overnight bag in her car as her mother spoke to the birds.
“You’ll be okay,” Maureen cooed to the parakeets, who responded with a bored sideways shuffle on their perches. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Her mother had to check on a few more things she may have forgotten to turn off, and then they finally pulled away from the house and headed down the small two-lane road that curved through her town.
“So Danny is still living with that girl?” her mother began when they had finally gotten going. It was a strange question. Did her mother think something significant had changed in the living situation of her ex-husband in the last few weeks?
“As far as I know, yes.”
“And they’re having a baby?”
