The Camera Never Lies

by David Rawlings

  If only he’d listened.

  Would Milly be happier? Would Kelly? Would they even have their dream house? Probably not, but they would have something even more valuable.

  Forgive an old man for advising the counselor, but I can see where your hearts are and where you’re headed. Based on your current trajectory, I’m not sure you’ll last.

  So the whole time Gramps could see what their problem was, but Daniel was too proud to accept his help.

  Daniel scanned the rest of the letter.

  I can help. I’m leaving you this gift I wish I had in my younger days, when choices in front of me were easier and would have saved so much pain . . . Please use it wisely; it has freed me from so much and taught me there’s always more to life than what we see.

  He knew what he needed to do.

  * * *

  Daniel splayed his fingers on Simon’s counter, a deadweight bow in his shoulders, his heart heavy. A single, tiny film canister sat in front of him.

  Simon stroked his chin. “Didn’t I say it would be easier to come clean about your secrets? I know what’s on this film.”

  A tired sigh escaped from Daniel. “What?”

  “Truth. Inescapable truth.”

  Inescapable. “When will they be ready?”

  “In an hour.”

  An hour. The usual length of a counseling session. Daniel always expected that the couple in front of him would commit to accepting the truth he’d spotlighted for them within that hour. Now, standing in the first seconds of an hour, he realized just how long sixty minutes could be.

  “That will be fifty-five dollars.”

  Daniel’s blood thumped in his ears. “Fifty-five? For developing my photos in an hour? It was only thirty-three dollars the first time and forty-four after that! This is extortion!”

  A warmth filled Simon’s eyes. “Surely you of all people know that the price is always higher the longer secrets remain.”

  Incredible. “You can’t do this!”

  Instead of defense, there was an understanding, a compassion, but no backing down from the price. Daniel meekly reached for his wallet.

  “You think the price today is high? Wait until your secrets fester even longer.”

  Daniel flicked a glance at the frames on the wall, faces caught in a moment, their pain visible to all. And his book still on display at the end of the row.

  Simon picked up the film canister with white-gloved fingers. “I’m so pleased you want to see who you are rather than who you want others to think you are. I’ll see you in an hour.” He shuffled to the back of the lab and creaked open a door on the side of the huge film processor.

  The tiny bell jingled Daniel’s arrival back into the real world. What was real, anyway? What we see? Or what is just behind it?

  A woman dressed in Lycra powered toward him, a screaming child in the stroller she pushed between heavy breaths. She threw Daniel a sweet smile as she passed him, but it slipped as she resumed her pace. A Lexus cruised past, a meaty, hairy arm resting in the open window, two-hundred-dollar sunglasses nodding to the pounding drum and bass. Was that Lexus a hard-earned luxury? Or a ball and chain, trapping the driver under a mirage of wealth propped up by shaky financing?

  Almost on autopilot, Daniel trudged up Northbound Avenue, the homing beacon of work drawing him in. Like it did most days. He had an hour to kill and nowhere else to go.

  Thirty-Seven

  Daniel’s entry to the practice was greeted by neither a ruby-red smile nor a flirty hello. The reception desk was as empty as the wall opposite. Silence filled the offices of Crossroads, an eerie portent into a future of consequences when he’d be run out of the industry as a fraud because the guy behind the bestselling book No Secrets had kept a secret of his own. A big one.

  A brunette head with a burgundy streak poked around the corner. “Daniel! What are you doing here?”

  Words deserted him. He didn’t know.

  “You look terrible! Are you okay?”

  Another question without an answer. “Where’s Monique?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t reach her.”

  An uncomfortable silence descended on them like a thick theater curtain. Two professionals stared at each other, as if actors waiting for each other to deliver the next line.

  Anna’s burgundy streak shook. “What’s going on?”

  Daniel smiled, tight-lipped. He would have to face the truth, and he needed to start somewhere. “My life is falling apart.”

  Anna ushered him to the sofa, her practiced silence deafening.

  “We have to see the principal about Milly’s behavior. She’s talked of hurting herself at school.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “Hurting herself?”

  Daniel massaged his temples, again faced with a question to which honesty was the only answer. “She told the school she needs to do something drastic to get our attention, and that’s their conclusion. Mine too.”

  “She never mentioned that to me when we talked.”

  “It’s more than that . . . Kelly’s planning on leaving me. She’s even opened her own bank account.”

  Anna winced. “Why don’t you both talk to one of us?”

  “Kelly won’t. She’s convinced there’s something going on with me and . . . someone else.”

  “With Monique?”

  The anxiety launched a fresh assault on him.

  “Why would she suspect there’s someone else?” Anna inspected his expression. “Have you given her a reason to think there’s something going on?”

  Daniel blinked hard. “Not consciously.”

  “Then talk to someone else. You can still fix this, but you can’t be the divorced guy who wrote the book on staying happily married.”

  Daniel’s jaw rippled as he closed the cover on his emotions.

  Anna leaned toward him, her eyebrow cocked. “Every time I mention your book, you shut down. You used to be happy to talk about anything and everything.”

  Daniel stared off into space. “You’d think I was crazy.”

  Anna’s second eyebrow joined her first. “I’ve heard them all. Try me.”

  “We all have secrets, Anna, and part of their deceptive beauty is the fact that we think we can keep them to ourselves until we’re ready for the right moment . . .” Daniel let his sentence trail into the ether.

  “I’ve read chapter one in your book. We all have.”

  Daniel blinked back tears. “But what if your secrets were revealed for you, and you couldn’t stop it?”

  Anna simply stared.

  The crack in Daniel’s voice spread, carried on a tide of anxiety. “And what if you’re being taunted with photographs of your secrets waved under your nose, laying bare what you’d prefer to leave tucked away in the darkness?”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “Photographs? Is this why you can’t show me the photo from our dinner?”

  The fuse that had been lit in Simon’s Film Lab reached his fragile self-control, and Daniel exploded. He jumped to his feet, his voice shrieking from him. “I can’t stop it. Do you hear me?”

  He flung open the door and sprinted from the practice, leaving Anna standing in a reception area without a group photo, a receptionist, or a business partner.

  Thirty-Eight

  Kelly’s knee bounced in time with the ticking clock that carved off the seconds outside Principal Rhodes’s office. Her call to Daniel went to voice mail for the third time in five minutes. There was no point leaving another message. She shook her head at the elderly woman behind the counter and received back an unamused smile.

  She had to find out what was going on with her husband. She speed-dialed another familiar number.

  “Crossroads Counseling. This is Jade.”

  “Jade, it’s Kelly Whiteley—”

  “So wonderful to speak with you! Thank you so much for the warm hospitality and your amazing food. You have all been wonderful to me in a difficult time—”

  Kelly laid out the pieces for the conversat
ion she would have to have, as difficult as it might be.

  “—but I’m afraid you’ve just missed Daniel.”

  Kelly took a giant breath, more than anything to inflate her confidence so she could speak to the person who—and this cut deep to even acknowledge—knew Daniel better than anyone.

  “That’s okay. I’m not calling for Daniel. Could you put me through to Anna, please?”

  “One moment.”

  Simon would be no help without whatever this sacred contract was. Only one option was left.

  The on-hold music cut with an abrupt jolt. “Kelly, I’m glad you’ve called. I’m worried about Daniel.”

  The first wave in her plan of attack stalled before it began as Anna stole Kelly’s opening line. “Looks like we both are.” She summoned forward her first line of attack troops, although now it felt more like defense. She turned away from the counter and cupped her hand around the phone as her voice dropped into a whisper. “First, I need to clear the air between me and Daniel’s work.”

  A practiced silence. Professional. There was no other way to say it than to just get to the point. “Anna, is Daniel cheating behind my back with anyone at work?”

  She braced herself for a defensive justification or a changing of the subject. She got neither.

  “No, he isn’t.”

  The answer to a question that drained her of emotional energy forced her voice into a whisper. “Thank you.”

  “I’m a little put out you thought you needed to ask me.”

  “I had to ask. Daniel spends so much time buried in work, and he no longer talks at home.”

  “He’s expressed frustration to me a number of times, saying he has answered that question but you didn’t want to listen.”

  Kelly winced. That stung. It was hard to bat away criticism when it was wrapped around a kernel of truth. “I just want us to be like we used to be.”

  “I wish that for you as well, Kelly. You and Daniel need to talk to someone.”

  “When I suggested that we talk to someone—perhaps not at Crossroads—Daniel got defensive and refused.”

  “I can see why.”

  “But—”

  “He was protecting his reputation, which, at one level, is fair. Would you get a builder to build your new home if you discovered his own house was falling apart?”

  No, she wouldn’t.

  “So maybe remember that when you two talk about what to do next. I’m more than willing to help. But regardless of what you do, I encourage you to do it fast.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Daniel just left here ranting about secrets that appeared in photographs—”

  Photographs.

  “—and he scared me. Daniel has always been a rational, in-control guy. I’ve never seen him like this. And when I asked him about the group photo, the one we took on your deck, he exploded and ran out.”

  Kelly felt a growing reaction—an old, familiar one. A compassion for the man she loved. He wasn’t concealing another woman; he was genuinely in trouble.

  “He was talking about secrets being waved around like photos. I’ve got no idea what he was talking about.”

  Kelly did.

  “Gramps’s camera. It’s special.”

  “How could it be special?”

  “I’m about to find out. Did Daniel ever show you a contract he had with the guy who develops his photos?”

  An impolite throat cleared from over her shoulder. Kelly looked up into the disapproving gaze of the elderly gatekeeper to the academy’s seat of power, flicking glances to the clock on the wall like ninja stars. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Whiteley, but the principal can’t wait any longer for your husband. He’ll see you now or not at all. At least not today.”

  * * *

  Kelly closed the last drawer in Daniel’s filing cabinet. She’d found no paperwork carrying a Simon’s Film Lab logo or anything remotely resembling a contract. His cabinet had given up no secrets, just like his desk. Just like her husband.

  She sat on the edge of Gramps’s recliner and surveyed Daniel’s sanctuary, fighting off the feeling of intrusion—a guilt mixed with the anger still pulsing through her after Daniel hadn’t made it to the principal meeting. But she’d been forced into the intrusion, and that was the honest truth.

  Then a comment Daniel made when he’d accused her of breaking into Gramps’s briefcase wandered through her mind. Why was he so paranoid about that briefcase?

  She opened the closet, and there it sat, tumblers scrambled. She squatted in front of the case and placed her thumbs on the clasps. There was no give, and she had no idea what the combination might be. An extra level of intrusion settled on her as she thought about picking the lock.

  Under the briefcase was the end of a thin strip of paper, and on it, a single word. Clarity. She lifted the case and saw a familiar phrase—Clarity like you’ve never experienced before—next to a logo for Simon’s Film Lab and a scrawl she’d seen hundreds of times. It belonged to Daniel.

  She picked up the strip with trembling fingers. Between Simon’s logo and Daniel’s signature was tiny text. She squinted hard.

  This represents a sacred contract between the holder and the truth they need to see.

  Kelly held in her hand the key to the answers about her husband. His well-being. Her happiness. She raced out of the study, her next stop Simon’s to get the photos that upset Daniel so much that he’d flung the last gift from his beloved Gramps to the rocks and pounding surf.

  Thirty-Nine

  Kelly slid the strip of paper across the counter with a shaky cocktail of fear and trepidation. The whole drive to the film lab had been an infuriating crawl in traffic, with each red light giving her extra time to picture the worst and then wallow in it.

  Simon rose on the balls of his feet as he looked down at the counter. “So Daniel has come clean with you.”

  A lie toyed with her mind. She had to get her hands on Daniel’s photos.

  Simon smiled into her hesitation. “I’m glad you chose honesty. Your photos will be ready in just a few moments.”

  The emotion that had threatened to spill over all day lapped again at the edges of her self-control. “I need to know what in these photos is upsetting Daniel so much. He ditched a meeting at school about his daughter’s future, and now he isn’t returning my calls.”

  “Truth. Inescapable truth.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Simon stood tall. “Do you remember when you said you were honest with your boss and it hadn’t, you said, worked? Well, sometimes your honesty doesn’t produce results you can see with your eyes. Sometimes the results are about your own integrity. Sometimes they’re about the longer term. Sometimes the longest term.”

  Kelly flashed back to the fleeting adrenaline surge of victory as she strutted from her boss’s office at Rubicon Pharma, then forward to now, when her triumph of quitting to his face was crumbling under the erosion of bills and an uncertain future.

  Simon stroked his chin and studied her. “Sometimes it takes time. Like with you.”

  The elation of her win over Arnold ebbed away. “What do you mean?”

  Simon gestured to the ornate gold frame on the wall. The tiles in her foyer. Her suitcase now grayed out. On top, the bright purple logo of Beyond Bank. “You’ve decided not to leave your husband, but the bank account is still open, isn’t it? You acknowledge the truth, but still it isn’t a part of you.”

  Kelly dropped her head. “Is that why Daniel won’t be honest with me?”

  Simon ushered her to the frames. “Honesty doesn’t mean telling everything to everyone all the time. Some people take longer to get there than others, like your Gramps. He spent years using the camera to capture the truth in other people’s lives before he finally addressed his own. Some people think they can manipulate the world so they can bury the truth or hide from it, but that doesn’t work either. Like Becky here.”

  Simon tapped at a frame crafted from flagstones, holding t
he image of a woman in a pink pencil skirt applying another layer of pancake makeup to an already made-up face. “She’s terrified of people seeing the real her, so she goes nowhere without her mask. For her, the price of honesty will be when her husband tires of a marriage to someone who, deep down, she isn’t.”

  The frame next to it showed a young man running from a horde of suited men, anger writ large on their faces. “Or Andy here, whose desire for the shortcuts in life will keep him running from those he cheats. It will cost him everything.”

  Kelly thought of the bosses at Rubicon who raked in million-dollar bonuses regardless of their performance. They dismissed truth as an impediment to business. “You know that’s not always the case.”

  Simon beamed. “It’s always the case. Truth isn’t invited in. It’s treated as an academic argument that can be discarded if it’s unsettling. Sometimes the consequences are immediate, sometimes a little more drawn out. Sometimes they aren’t felt until the fog of age clouds the mind, blocking everything but regrets, and they follow people to the grave. Or beyond.”

  Worst-case scenarios from her drive came back to her. “So what consequences will Daniel face?”

  Simon brushed the lapels of his white lab coat. “The same as everyone else. A price to pay for mistakes. It may simply be a different life path, perhaps not the one he should take. But ultimately, an unhappy one. An unfulfilled one.”

  The sound of a soft buzzer drifted from the back of the lab.

  “Excuse me. Daniel’s—sorry, your—photographs are ready.” Simon drifted to the back of the lab and took care in slipping on white gloves. He extracted several photos from the bowels of the film processor and flipped through them, a solemn smile on his lips.