Page 76 of Safe With You

“You talk about pictures differently.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” She tilted her head. “Like you’re not really interested in making things look perfect.”

“I’m not.”

“That sounds like a strange thing for a photographer to admit.”

“Perfect usually isn’t interesting.”

Her eyebrows lifted.

I nodded toward the laptop.

“Rachel’s picture wouldn’t have been better if I’d stopped her and fixed her hair first. Mrs. Williams wouldn’t have laughed the same way if I’d asked her husband to whisper something again. You wouldn’t have looked the same if I’d told you I was taking your picture.”

Her eyes held mine.

“So you just wait?”

“Sometimes.”

“For what?”

“The part people aren’t doing for the camera.”

Something in her expression softened.

“You make it sound like you’re collecting memories.”

The words landed somewhere I hadn’t expected.

For a moment, all I could hear was the low music playing through the store and the faint hum of the refrigerator behind the café counter.

Memories.

I’d spent years taking them for other people.

Birthdays. Weddings. Babies. Families.

Proof that somebody had been there.

That something had happened.

That a moment existed even after it was gone.

“Something like that,” I said.

The lock at the front door clicked before Luna could ask anything else.

Naomi stepped inside carrying an oversized tote bag on one shoulder and sunglasses pushed onto the top of her head.

Her gaze went to Luna.

Then me.

Then the open laptop.