Only Ever You

by Rebecca Drake

  Over the course of an interminable hour, she took more than a hundred photos of the little girl. Baby alone, baby with pumpkins as props, and baby with mother. In a few shots the child actually smiled. A grumpy Madonna and Child commemorating a pagan holiday.

  The woman seemed slightly less annoyed at the end of the photo shoot than she had been at the beginning. “I guess at least one of these will work,” she conceded when Jill let her see the digital proofs. “Her father will probably like it.” The baby squawked, sounding just as enthused, and Jill managed a faint smile. The woman would fuss over the price. As soon as she left she’d be on her cell phone complaining that she should have taken her child to a portrait studio at the mall.

  She hustled the woman and child back out to the front of the studio, just as Tania walked out of the door of the production and developing room, followed by a huge, muscular white man with a tangled mass of dirty auburn hair and matching beard. Dressed head to toe in black and wearing mirrored sunglasses, he hoisted a backpack, also in black, onto his shoulder. With her blue-streaked blond hair and sparkly nose stud, wearing a flowing, post-millennial hippie skirt, Tania looked like a latter-day flower child, and combined aromas of patchouli and pot drifted after her. The client looked askance, clutching her child’s baby carrier close as she passed them in the lobby, hustling out the door to the Volvo, as if one of them planned to snatch her child. Kyle stared unabashedly, mouth hanging slightly open. Jill realized she’d crossed her arms, so she let them fall to her sides, trying not to look like the mother who’d waited up all night for her rebellious teen daughter. What the client didn’t know was that underneath her hippie-dippie exterior and beyond her terrible taste in men, Tania was a great photographer. And while Jill could find another photographer, Tania was also a longtime friend.

  Not that the bonds of friendship didn’t have their limits. “You must be Tania’s boyfriend,” she said, trying to be civil and struggling to remember the name of this latest romantic partner.

  “Oh, yeah,” Tania said, sweeping an arm toward the guy, who stood in the center of the lobby, arms crossed over his massive chest. “This is Leo.”

  The man’s beard dipped, which might have been a nod. “Nice to meet you, Leo.” Jill extended her hand, and he stared at it for a second before giving it a limp shake. He had a small but vicious-looking skull and crossbones tattooed on the side of his neck. “Leo dropped me off,” Tania said. Standing on tiptoe to give him a lingering kiss, she murmured, “See you later” in a voice best left in the bedroom.

  To avoid watching the good-bye, Jill focused on collecting the mail, which Kyle had left scattered on the front counter as usual. She sorted through it, stiffening slightly when she saw her mother’s familiar scrawl on an envelope. The letter had been opened, though since it had “Jillian Lassiter Photography” on the envelope maybe Kyle had thought it was business correspondence. Not completely off base since it was undoubtedly a request for money. She shoved it into her pocket, unread, looking up when she heard the door close. Jill watched Leo sauntering off toward an old car before she followed Tania back down the hall to the production room. “Nice of you to show up.”

  “Don’t be a bitch. I sent you a text, didn’t you get it?”

  “No.” Jill double-checked her cell phone before holding it out for her friend and partner’s scrutiny.

  “Really? I wonder what happened.”

  “Let me guess—you were still in bed and a little distracted?”

  “Do I detect a note of jealousy?” Tania said with a laugh. She grabbed Jill’s arm and pulled her into what they sometimes still referred to as the darkroom, though now it was mostly filled with computer equipment to edit and print photos. “Isn’t he hot?”

  “Does this one have a job?” Tania’s last boyfriend had been a professional moocher.

  “Jesus, Jill!”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes, he has a job. God, you’re like an old woman sometimes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know—computers and shit like that.” She waved airily as if the details didn’t matter. “He’s good with his hands.”

  “Oh, I saw that,” Jill said.

  Tania sneered. “What’s the matter? Too little action in snooze-urbia?”

  Jill rolled her eyes. From the day they’d become friends, fifteen years ago when both were freshman art majors at Carnegie Mellon, Tania had never missed an opportunity to comment negatively on suburban living, which she’d never actually experienced firsthand. She and Jill had bonded not only over a shared passion for photography, but also over being Pittsburgh transplants who’d been raised in larger cities by unstable mothers.

  For all her criticisms of “Stepford living,” Tania wanted the stability of this studio just as much as Jill, and it wouldn’t exist at all if it hadn’t been subsidized by suburban David’s bourgeois job. “Please tell me you haven’t moved in with this guy,” she said as Tania sat down at one of the desktops to download shots she’d taken at a recent wedding.

  “Not yet.” Tania looked uncomfortable. “But we’re talking about it.” She moved an average of once every year and a half, always convinced that a new apartment or, better yet, a new man’s apartment, would bring her good luck. Jill was pleasantly surprised that it hadn’t already happened with her latest lover.

  “I think it’s great you’re waiting, taking your time.”

  Tania shot her a look, then sighed. “Actually, he still lives with his mother.”

  “He has a mother?” Jill blurted, adding hastily at Tania’s offended look, “Sorry, it’s just, he seems so, well, so independent.”

  “Everyone has a mother, Jill. He’s very attached to his.”

  “And that isn’t a good thing?”

  “It’s a little Norman Bates for me—his mother’s a nut.” Tania circled a finger near her ear. “I’ve got one of those already. I don’t need a matched set.”

  Jill laughed, but couldn’t stop the slight wince, glad that Tania didn’t see. Did she still talk to her mother? The letter from Jill’s own mother seemed to throb in her pocket. She wouldn’t answer it, she’d stopped answering them some time ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.

  “Anyway, he’s getting his own place soon,” Tania said, pulling Jill’s attention back. “I think he could be long-term. He just gets me, you know? And he’s into kids, too. You know how much I love kids.”

  “You’re great with Sophia,” Jill said, trying to hide what she really felt at the thought of flighty Tania becoming a mother. At least she wasn’t lying; Tania was fantastic with Sophia, but that was very different from having a child to care for 24/7.

  She and Tania reviewed the photos of the wedding, which they’d shot a week ago. A pretty young bride and her baby-faced groom, both of them looking so happy it was almost painful. There was so much promise in wedding photos. She wished she could freeze the moment, keep the couple just as happy as they were in the photos. But life would dim that light in their eyes. How long would it be before they figured out there was no happily ever after?

  Where had that come from? Jill wasn’t unhappy, not really. She turned away, shaking off the blues. “Let’s get them in here to review the proofs.” She gathered up prints from a session a few days before, black-and-whites of a man and woman holding an incredibly small infant in a hospital room, his eyes closed in every shot, his features perfect.

  “Do you want me to mail those?” Tania offered, looking over her shoulder.

  “No thanks, I’m going to drop them off next week.” She never mailed these photos; she always delivered them personally. There were multiple prints and after a moment Jill discarded one in which the mother had started crying. Her grief was too raw, too painful—they wouldn’t like that one. Jill blinked back sudden tears of her own, quickly gathering the photos together. She’d done so many sessions like this one, but they still moved her.

  She searched the top desk drawer for the hidden
place at the back where they kept the key to the large supply cabinet in the corner of the room, but it wasn’t there. “Did you take the key?”

  “It’s probably in the door,” Tania said, absorbed in sorting through the wedding proofs.

  Jill turned to look at the cabinet, at the key sitting there. She swallowed hard, feeling more annoyance with Tania—always running late and now she couldn’t even be bothered to hide the key? With a back door that opened on to an unlit alleyway, the studio was vulnerable to thieves. They’d had a break-in the first month after opening. Jill had installed a security camera outside, but when the camera got stolen it wasn’t cost-effective to replace it. Instead she set up motion-sensor security lights, which were hit or miss, and installed a deadbolt on the back door. She knew that wasn’t enough, so she locked up everything of value inside. “Please remember to put the key away, okay? We don’t want our stuff stolen.”

  “I’m not the one who left it out,” Tania said, voice huffy. “Why do you always blame me for things?”

  Because you’re irresponsible, Jill thought. “I wish Kyle would put things back where they go.”

  “Kyle?” Tania gave her a puzzled look. “He doesn’t touch this room, remember? You told him to focus only on the front desk and scheduling.”

  Jill fingered the key still sitting in the lock. Had she forgotten to put it back last night? She was usually so careful. “Were you in here yesterday afternoon?”

  Tania looked up. “I wasn’t here at all yesterday. I had the Nicholson party to shoot. You were the only one here, remember?” She gave Jill a smug look, implicit in her tone the fact that Jill couldn’t own up to her own mistakes.

  “I must have forgotten to put it away,” Jill said, more to thwart Tania’s sense of satisfaction than because she really believed it. Had she been so distracted that she didn’t remember? Weird. Still puzzling, Jill opened the door and cried out as a tripod tumbled forward, slamming into her. It slid off her and she caught it before it hit the floor. “What the hell?”

  Tania grabbed it from her. “Are you okay?”

  Jill rubbed her shoulder and collarbone. “Yeah, just a little bruised.” The cabinet was in disarray—boxes of photos shuffled through, cameras and other equipment obviously moved, which was how that top-heavy tripod, which was usually tucked against the back of one of the vertical shelves, had fallen out. “Someone ransacked this.”

  “Well it wasn’t me,” Tania said quickly. “It must have been Kyle.”

  “You just said this room is limited to you and me—so why would he even come in here?”

  He hadn’t. Once summoned, Kyle stood in the office doorway and swore up and down that he hadn’t been in the back of the building “in, like, over a month, maybe more.”

  “Maybe we had a break-in!” he suggested, suddenly animated. “Do you want me to call the cops?”

  “And tell them what?” Tania scoffed. “That our cabinet was messed up? Is anything even missing?”

  Jill scanned the shelves again. “I’m not sure; I don’t think so.” All the equipment seemed to be there, but she couldn’t swear to it.

  “Then let’s just forget about it.” Tania waved two pieces of paper at Kyle. “I need you to send this invoice—the address is in the system—and I need you to call these clients and tell them their proofs are ready.”

  Jill followed him out to the front of the studio. “How long were Tania and Leo here before I finished with the client?” she asked in a low voice.

  Kyle looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know, maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes?”

  Plenty of time to have gone through the production and equipment room in search of easy money. Fortunately, they kept that in the register at the front of the studio and at night she put that day’s money away in a locked cashbox, which she stored at the back of a locked desk drawer until she could deposit it in the bank at the end of the week. On impulse Jill went to check the drawer, but it looked undisturbed, and so did the box, the money still there, along with a few checks written by clients.

  She walked back down the hall to the production room. Tania had a Nikon slung around her neck like a piece of funky jewelry and was busy shoving another camera and some memory cards into her woven bag. “I’ve got to get to that shoot for the yoga school in Regent Square. Don’t want to get any bad karma.” She brought her hands together in a prayerful pose, laughing, and Jill mustered a small smile. She locked the cabinet, making sure it was secure before taking the key back to hide it in the top drawer of the desk.

  The drawer was also in disarray. Jill stood there, staring at it. She hadn’t noticed when she went to grab the key. She pulled opened the rest of the drawers, one after the other, and every one was just like the first.

  “What is it?” Tania paused in the doorway.

  “The desk has been ransacked, too.” Jill said. “Was Leo in here alone?”

  Tania’s smile faded. “Of course not.” She crossed to the desk and reached past Jill to check the drawers herself. “So some things have been moved—”

  “Not some things, everything.”

  “Maybe, but maybe you or I moved them. We had a busy week last week, remember?”

  “Not that busy.”

  “Nothing’s missing, right? So no harm done.”

  “Listen, I don’t think we should allow strangers into the office.”

  “If you mean Leo, he isn’t a stranger and anyway he didn’t go through the drawers.”

  “So what was he doing back here?”

  Tania’s gaze met hers, then skittered away. Her cheeks flushed. “He wanted a private good-bye.”

  “You were having sex? You had sex with your boyfriend in this room?”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “Isn’t any place off-limits to you? What if someone had walked in?”

  “I’m not an idiot—we locked the door.”

  “He shouldn’t have been back here at all. Don’t bring anyone back here again.”

  “It was just for a few minutes—”

  Jill held up her hand. “Just don’t. Okay?”

  “Fine.” Tania spat the word.

  They stared at each other for a long minute. Tania broke the gaze, turning toward the door. She gave a little laugh, but it had an edge. “Jesus, Jill, you’re becoming paranoid.”

  chapter seven

  JOURNAL—APRIL 2009

  You must have seen me coming a mile away. I thought I was so sophisticated, with my law school degree and two new suits. I didn’t understand how young I really was or how naive.

  “You’re so tense,” you said to me that first time. “Let me help you relax.” We were alone in the firm’s law library and I’d taken off my jacket. I froze as your hands came to knead my shoulders, but I didn’t move away.

  I can’t claim to be innocent in this; I know that. Months later you threw that at me. You said, “You could have said no at any time.” But you were the senior member of the firm, you were the lawyer I was working for on that case, I was still in my probationary period. There are so many reasons I couldn’t say no, the least of which was feeling flattered that you were attracted to me.

  When you let your hand slip into the open neckline of my blouse, I remember flinching and you laughed a little, said “whoops,” and pulled back. Then you leaned in again, sniffing the air. “God, you smell sweet. Is that your shampoo?” And you lowered your head to my hair and I stayed still this time, embarrassed and unsure of how to respond. Your head dipped farther down and I could feel your breath hot against my neck. “Or is it perfume?” Then you pressed a kiss, just a little one, on my neck right below my ear.

  I have wondered sometimes what might have happened if I’d reported what you did to the head of the firm. Would he have fired you, do you think? No one wants to get pinned with a sexual harassment suit, but wouldn’t the senior partners be more likely to think they could contain it by sending you to sensitivity training? Whistle-blowers and complainers rarely make it f
ar in any business. I was naive, but not stupid. The best course of action would be to forget it ever happened and stay quiet.

  Only you couldn’t forget.

  chapter eight

  OCTOBER 2013—TWO WEEKS

  Cosmo balanced on his hind legs on the passenger seat, front paws resting against the window of her old Ford Taurus while Bea slowly circled the cul-de-sac pretending to look for a house number. He enjoyed riding in the car, little ears perched at soft right angles, a quizzical look on his furry face. He was a rescue dog; Bea had driven to four different shelters to find him. There were plenty of other, bigger dogs available, lots of lonely-looking pit bulls, but she hadn’t needed a dog for protection, she needed one that wouldn’t frighten people. Something soft, small, and friendly; no barkers or biters or nervous dogs that peed on the rug.

  There were no cars parked on the driveway of the Lassiter house; by Bea’s calculations nobody should be home. She left their block and wove slowly through the rest of the neighborhood until she reached another cul-de-sac roughly parallel to the first, the two streets separated by hilly woodland. There were more lots for sale on this street, leaning realty signs and an overgrowth of dry, yellow weeds indicative of the recession. One house had its frame up, but construction had apparently stopped some time ago, given the frayed plastic sheeting wrapped around warping two-by-fours.

  She parked out front, attaching Cosmo’s leash to his collar and checking that her dark blonde wig was in place before exiting the car. If anyone asked, Bea was a would-be buyer of a new house, just taking a look at what this street had to offer. She zipped up her jacket and took one of the spec sheets from the plastic tube attached to the realty sign, pretending to study it. “Four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths; unparalleled luxury only twenty minutes from Downtown Pittsburgh. Pick your own finishes!” Cosmo lifted a small hind leg and peed against the wooden signpost.