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Chapter Nine
Daphne
“You can’t go out there.”
Carter blocks the door leading out of Emerson’s mudroom, his feet planted and his arms crossed over his chest. It’s the most irritating thing he’s ever done. I can’t remember him being this stubborn, ever. When the front door shut, I rushed for the mudroom. Carter barely made it here first.
“Get out of my way. They’re probably fighting. One of them could be dead.”
“I don’t think anyone is dead.”
“Leo had a knife.”
“He doesn’t have it now. He threw it into your painting.” My brothers have this obnoxious shared trait, which is that they can sound reasonable even when they’re being the most ridiculous and frustrating.
“I saw.”
Carter raises his eyebrows, and heat crawls up my face.
“Obviously, I didn’t mean for him to see that painting just then. Or, like, ever.”
“Are you going to tell me what it means? He wanted to kill your painting.”
“No.” I’m beyond embarrassed about the painting. It was about me, not about Leo. Well—it was about him, but it was also about me. I shouldn’t have sent it to that auction. Especially since… “Were you serious about that stuff you said?”
“Which things?”
“That he taught me to walk. And before that. When I was a baby. He didn’t mention that to me.”
Carter furrows his brow. “Are you telling me you haven’t looked at the family photos?”
My throat closes. “Do you mean the big albums? The old ones?”
“Yeah. You were too busy painting to go see?”
“No, I—those are in Dad’s office. I don’t like to go in there.”
“Oh.” With a slight shrug, Carter pulls out his phone. Scrolls through it. Holds it out to me. “Here.”
On the screen is a photo of Leo. It was taken in one of the living rooms in the Morelli mansion. I know the furniture. Not all of it has changed over the years. He’s leaning down, holding both of my baby hands in his while I walk. He must be ten or eleven, because I’m a baby. Maybe a year and a half. I look shocked and delighted by the camera flash.
“Why do you have this on your phone?”
“I had some of the albums digitized a few years ago. You can keep scrolling, if you want.”
Carter’s the one who went the farthest away. I’m torn between demanding to know why he did this if he lives in England and flipping through photos I’ve never seen. Here’s Eva, five or six, with red lipstick on. She’s looking at herself in the mirror. A woman’s outline is fuzzy on the left side of the photo. Our mother, I think. Lucian in the yard, a jump rope in his hand. He’s swinging it fast, so it’s nothing but a red-and-white circle in the air. His face is the same. He looks into the camera with cold curiosity. Tiernan running, the motion blurring him out.
This was before digital cameras. Someone had to take these on film. Which means the moments are rarely repeated. One photo, and then a gap in time. Nobody took ten pictures at once unless it was for something important. Birthday parties go past on the screen. Lucian’s first communion, then Eva’s, then Leo’s. Each of them posing with a white cake and the Bishop.
Tiernan and Carter. Sophia.
There’s a photo in the same living room. Leo, lanky and thin-faced, cross-legged in a chair. A pillow on his lap. He’s holding a new baby, which of course is me. In the photo, he seems unaware of the camera, despite the flash. He’s looking at me. And even though my face is squished and red, I’m looking back at him.
“They’re not in order,” Carter says. “Some of the uploads got shuffled.”
There are more. Leo, watching TV while he holds a bottle for baby me. A side shot of our kitchen table. Leo has his legs stretched across to a chair on the opposite side, homework spread out in front of him. I’m on my belly on the floor, protected by the table and his legs, my tongue caught in my teeth while I draw. I can’t be more than three.
And then I’m four, painting Eva’s nails in her bedroom, a paper towel under her hands.
