“They’ve gotten all their questions answered by this point,” Ren said with a grin. He was acting charming, which alarmed her a little.
Elka walked in, took in the seating arrangement, and went to the other table, where she launched into an intense conversation with Kyle. Ren kept giving Sarah warm glances and making light jokes over the course of the meal, but it was impossible for her to tell whether he was trying to be reassuring after rejecting her or acting flirtatious after their kiss.
She sighed quietly to herself. It had come to pass exactly as she had feared: she had feelings for Ren again, and she didn’t know what he wanted. Thiswas why she had been worried. This was what always happened around him.
Binita and Tanjul were at their table, and Sarah caught Binita looking between Ren and Sarah knowingly. She felt tempted to ask her for life advice.What should I do? What does it mean? Does he like me?Binita had three children, two of them at university and one in high school, and she seemed to know how life worked. Sarah’s own mother would have just advised Sarah to assume the worst.
Sarah was tired of assuming the worst.
Whatever else Danny had cost her, she realized that she didn’t want his behavior to make her so cynical that she gave up on love entirely. It hit her for the first time that by swearing off relationships, she had given Danny too much power. She had let him ruin her chances of finding anyone else.
He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve anything else from her, and certainly not more of her time…certainly not all of her possible future relationships for the rest of her life.
Looking back, she realized she had never really yelled at Danny for what he’d done. She had simply gone quiet. No wonder the idea of a ‘Divorce’ photo series had started with a mental image of setting something on fire. Sarah was furious…and not even at Danny. She was furious with herself for how much time she had spent on him.
Ren caught her eye as she stared at the table and leaned over to speak softly. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“You look like you want to kill someone.”
“Not you,” she said. “Not this time, anyway.”
He smiled that sweet smile, and she realized that she was angry at him, too. Not with the same intensity, but she was tired of being confused by him. They were going to have to talk. And she was going to have to set some boundaries.
The evening boat ride to their shooting location was bumpy, breezy, and one of the most spectacular visual experiences of Sarah’s entire life. The simple name of Western Brook Pond belied how stunning the setting was; the pond had been formed as a fjord and was now a narrow strip of water surrounded by cascading cliffs that framed a winding stretch of sky. The last few pink clouds trailed above as the sun set somewhere on the unseen horizon. It was pure wilderness on all sides: no houses, just endless stretches of trees and cliffs, occasionally interrupted by narrow waterfalls tumbling down from above.
Deep in the fjord, the captain cut the boat engine near the shore and they drifted the last few feet to an inconspicuous wooden dock. The captain roped in the boat, and they climbed onto the wobbly planks of the dock one-by-one, then walked the few feet out onto the rocks where they gathered as a group, taking in the surroundings.
“No fires,” the boat captain repeated in a loud voice. “Not even a cigarette. Keep your flashlights on, don’t try to climb the cliffs, and don’t wander off.”
“We’ll stay close to shore,” Ren promised.
The captain nodded once and then handed Ren a walkie talkie to reach him in case of injury. “Have a good night. Don’t do something stupid. See you at dawn.”
When the charter boat hummed away, it was just the twelve of them with cameras and tripods at the end of the world, the sky festooned with twisting scarves of color.
“Let’s start by setting up a sleeping area as a base camp,” Ren said. “Then you can walk anywhere within about ten or fifteen minutes to find your shot. Just stay in pairs in case anyone twists an ankle. Don’t go too high up the hill because there are cliffs and rockslides. The ground is all shale around here and very unstable to walk on. My advice is to focus on shots around the water. And keep your headlamps on and go very slowly as soon as it gets dark.”
Their spot in the wilderness had been carefully selected: there was a small path upwards that was used by some of the wildlife management team, and nearby was a low flat area under some trees where the rocky ground was softened by needles and grasses. It was an ideal spot to spread out sleeping bags and stage their gear. Ren started by assembling a soft, hazy battery-powered lamp in the middle of the sleeping area so everyone would be able to find it once it grew dark.
Sarah tossed out her own sleeping bag on the fir needles. It was a simple bag that she had picked up a few days earlier with Ren on their drive to the west coast. She watched as Ren set up his own sleeping bag next to hers; his bag was thick and expensive and looked designed to handle the arctic tundra.
“I’ll probably be up all night,” he said as he unrolled it. “But I’ll put this here just in case.” It was right next to hers, which maddeningly seemed to imply everything or nothing.
She turned to help Rita and Selassie arrange their gear and sleeping bags.
“Ready for your portrait?” Sarah asked Rita. “Is tonight the night?”
“Let’s just skip mine,” Rita said. “I’m not wearing make-up.”
Sarah and Selassie met each other’s eyes. “I’ll find you later,” Sarah replied.
She wandered along the edge of the water through the pale pink sunset, picking through the shale and climbing over bits of tossed driftwood until she noticed Fred, who had just finished taking a shot of the water as it mirrored the sky in the last light of sunset.
“What about staying in pairs?” she teased.
“Sorry!” he called back. “I’ll behave once it gets dark.”
