Her Secret Protector

by Roxanne Snopek

  “Nothing you can do is going to change people’s minds about my dogs. Or me, for that matter.”

  “You sure it was all directed at you?”

  “Come on, Carrie. I doubt anyone’s even noticed those pictures you’re so worried about.”

  Carrie followed him to the canned goods aisle and stood close behind him so she could speak quietly.

  “I see. It’s all about you. We may have – I’m just spit balling here – hit upon part of your little PR problem.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

  He liked the way she said we, though. We. Like they were a team.

  Whoop, whoop, went the alarm.

  He ignored it.

  “Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward finding a solution,” she said, nudging him toward the dairy case.

  “I’m not the problem.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you like being a recluse? Do you like that people are scared of you? That they think you’re a dangerous guy? That you’ve got vicious pit bulls patrolling your razor-wire fences?”

  “Pit bulls?” A nearby shopper glanced over and he clenched his jaw. “They’re not pit bulls. And FYI, pit bulls get a bad rap.”

  “I know, I know, blame the deed, not the breed,” she said. “Preaching to the choir. But that’s beside the point. If you want me to help you, you’ve got to get out of the way and let me.”

  She was close enough that he could smell the fresh air clinging to her hair.

  The color had faded from her cheeks but her eyes were still bright. It was the friendly face of a well-meaning neighbor. Or something.

  “Always sticking up for the underdog, huh?”

  “I’m not offering you a kidney, Ethan. I hate it when people are judged unfairly, that’s all.” She took a step back. The tiny angry frown line between her eyes tickled him for some reason. Despite her own problems, this little bit of a thing wanted to go to battle on his behalf.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  He felt off balance, out of his element and didn’t like it one bit. “Didn’t mean to sound like such a…”

  “A d-bag?” Carrie suggested. “An a-hole? A son of a b? Stop me when I hit on it. I’ve got a whole alphabet.”

  A soft smile, not unlike the one she wore in that blue vase photograph, played on her lips.

  “I’m all of that, and more. Can we just go?” Ethan looked around him, helplessly. The store was filling up. Several people had already edged past them, giving them pointed looks for blocking the aisle.

  Carrie bit her lip, then glumly agreed.

  They made their way to the checkout where he handed the young male cashier – who hadn’t made eye contact with him – his debit card.

  “Hey Carrie,” said the boy, looking past Ethan. “Careful on your way out, okay? I hear there’s some loose dogs running around.”

  The boy had the sharp eyes and pale complexion of a gamer. His fingers flew over the cash register keys, with only the occasional glance from him. Poor kid hadn’t learned to put his skills to good use yet.

  “Mark,” said Carrie, dryly. “Meet Ethan Nash, owner of said dogs, as if you didn’t know. Ethan, my little brother. Mark, you’re an idiot. One of his dogs wanted to play ball with Amanda’s kid, that’s it. No chase, no contact. No bites, no growls, no blood.”

  Something twitched inside Ethan’s chest. Carrie had taken his word as truth, without question.

  The boy gave Ethan an abashed glance. “Sorry, man. Just repeating what I heard.”

  “Next time, consider the source.” Carrie reached across and poked him. “And you can repack those eggs. I saw what you did.”

  Ethan stood just outside the doors, waiting for Carrie to complete her purchase.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Rain check on the steak dinner?”

  “Just take me home,” she said. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  Chapter Nine

  ‡

  Carrie sat in her office with the door closed, pretending she wasn’t aware of Ethan upstairs, moving from door to door and window to window. She’d tried to tell him that she didn’t actually need the system installed, but he suggested that Scott Norman seemed like the kind of person who would ask about it. She’d had to admit he had a point.

  Then her grandfather would hear about it and insist on coming by to check it out.

  No, she’d suggested a security system, so she was getting a security system. There was a certain comfort in the thought, she realized. Or maybe it was just the quiet movements of someone else in the house.

  Someone who was doing more than knocking over water glasses and falling into toilets, at least. Ethan’s arrival had sent Belinda into hiding. Carrie smiled, wondering how long the cat would sulk.

  She was supposed to be going over her schedule for the rest of the summer, though she’d gotten lost in an internet search, making sure that the images Ethan assured her were back in hiding, were indeed hidden.

  That damn photograph, she thought, looking at the original. That girl looked so free, so easy with herself, it was hard to believe it was actually her.

  Technically, the image was mediocre. The composition was overly busy and the lighting too harsh but considering the tiny, south-facing third-floor San Francisco apartment she’d been in at the time, not bad.

  She’d posed for the photo when she was still a raw student, high on the triumph of studying where her parents would never have allowed her to go without the scholarship.

  Disapproving in the non-specific way of those being pushed past their comfort zones, they’d been full of caution at how living so far from home might affect her character, leave her open to the temptations of a worldly nature.

  Unaware of the honor it was for her to be selected.

  Unaware of how badly prepared for life their oldest daughter was, thanks to their overly-conservative parenting.

  Unaware of the emotional trauma that had brought her back home to them.

  Her office line rang and Carrie jumped. It had been a long time since she’d thought about the girl she’d once been.

  “Forever Yours Photography.” Her voice was higher than normal, her words too quick. She forced herself to take a breath.

  “Carrie? It’s Karen, from the festival committee.”

  Carrie had gone to high school with Emma Stanhope, Karen’s daughter. She’d heard Emma was back in town, doing something on Uncle Robert’s orchard.

  “I’m confirming that you’ll be our official photographer again this year,” Karen went on. “I know you always do it but I also know how busy you are. I didn’t want to assume.”

  Busy. Right.

  “Of course I’ll do it again,” she responded. She cleared her throat and looked away from the screen. “I love the festival.”

  She counted on this contract and hadn’t realized until just now, how worried she’d been about it.

  Family portrait work was unpredictable. Her two biggest and most reliable contracts were with the school board and the city. They paid the majority of her bills and she couldn’t do without them.

  “I’m glad,” said the woman. “You always make us look good. Do you want to run your usual ad in the brochure?”

  “Definitely,” said Carrie. It was the kind of you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours situation on which small towns ran. As long as everyone stayed itchy, it worked fine.

  “Perfect,” said Karen. “I’ll send over your retainer immediately. Thanks, hon.”

  She hung up the phone, weak with relief. With the festival gig, she’d be able to pay off her equipment.

  She looked at the image again, grateful beyond belief that Ethan had found a way to hide the links. A photo like this, of Cherry Lake’s home-grown sweetheart good girl family photographer, would be career calamine, a death knell for Forever Yours Photography, not to mention Carrie’s personal reputation.

  Yet she loved it. She’d loved that time in her life. This photo represented her changing
into a different person, her on the brink of a different time. Breaking free, becoming someone new, someone… more.

  Someone powerful.

  And she’d used that memory every time a woman had come to her, wanting to recreate her own image.

  A knock sounded on the studio door. She jumped and fumbled to close the picture.

  “Carrie? Are you in there? I need to talk with you immediately.” A pause. “Did you know there’s a car sitting outside your house? I had to park behind it.”

  Mom. And she didn’t sound happy. If she was here to complain about Jess’s latest shenanigans, Carrie wasn’t interested. She didn’t necessarily agree with her cousin’s choices, but Carrie would defend to the death her right to make them.

  Thought it must be nice, she thought for the umpteenth time, to follow your heart without always worrying about what everyone thought.

  “Hey, Mom,” she called. “Come on in.”

  Cathy Logan entered the studio, but instead of glancing around her, as she usually did, like she was expecting something nasty to jump out at her from the corners, she strode straight inside, a page printed with a familiar photo held out before her.

  No. Carrie’s stomach turned to ice. Dust motes floating in the sunshine slowed down, thickening the air. Every molecule, it seemed, went into suspended animation, pausing for the inevitable storm to follow.

  “What is the meaning of this?” asked Cathy, shaking the paper. Of everyone who could have happened onto those links, it had to be the one person that would recognize her instantly, didn’t it?

  “Have you any idea what people will say if this gets out?”

  Ethan told her the links were disabled. Or gone. Or destroyed, or whatever he’d done to make them disappear.

  “Since when…” Cathy gestured, sputtering, at the page as if it held the secrets to the underworld, “have you been involved in this… this…”

  From some faraway part of her brain, a bubble of laughter rose inside Carrie. Inappropriate, suicidal laughter.

  “Pornography!” Cathy managed to spit out, finally.

  The ugly word instantly cut off her laugh.

  “It’s not porn.”

  “Oh no?” Her mother put her hands on her hips. “A picture of you, posed provocatively, almost completely naked. What else would you call it? What,” she added, “will I tell your grandfather?”

  Her voice rippled slightly on the last word and Carrie’s heart stuttered. She recalled the time she and Jess had been caught dancing in Grandfather’s living room the summer they were thirteen. In their bikinis, still children at heart, they’d been practicing moves that never really would become natural to Carrie.

  He’d looked at them, horrified, angry and sad, all at once, and Carrie had grabbed a towel, ashamed of the curves she was just getting used to.

  Except for that one time, Grandpa Nate had always been so proud of her. His good granddaughter. The quiet, obedient one who’d always smiled at the right time, did as she was told and could be counted on to be a credit to the Nathan Jackson family tree.

  Grandpa, who was old and didn’t need extra stress. If he had a heart attack because of her…

  “We never expected something like this from you, Carrie.” She shook her head.

  “It’s not what you think, Mom.” Her voice wavered and her hands shook as she took the page and dropped it into the recycling.

  “Aunt Linda brought it to my attention.” Her mother’s high cheekbones were bright with color but she had no trouble aiming the full force of her gaze at Carrie. “Between the cherry harvest and the festival, she and Uncle Robert are about done in. And then they have to see something like this?”

  Uncle Robert always got stressed during the cherry season and Carrie knew that Aunt Linda had sent him to a doctor in Polson for some tests recently.

  “This has nothing to do with them, Mom,” she said. “Or you for that matter.”

  “You’re a Jackson,” Cathy said tightly. “That makes it my business. Do you know who showed it to Linda, Carrie? Mrs. Terlecki. Half the town’s probably seen it, by now.”

  Terlecki. The witch. Carrie should have known better than to even talk to her. She’d probably gone searching for dirt, the second Carrie’d left the school.

  “Have you seen them, Mother?”

  “It’s right there on the page! My daughter, posing as a centerfold. I thought I raised you better than that.”

  “I meant,” said Carrie, gesturing for her mother to sit down at the computer. “Have you seen them on the internet?”

  “You know I’m not good with computers. Wait. What do you mean, them?” Fresh horror dawned on Cathy’s face. “Are there more? Don’t tell me, Carrie, that you’ve done this more than once.”

  “Mom,” she began.

  “Stop. I don’t want to know. This isn’t the sort of thing a town like this forgets.”

  “This isn’t… what you said,” she tried again, her words spilling out. “Photos like this are about empowerment, healing, making peace with certain things, sometimes. They’re called Goddess photos-”

  “Goddess photos?” Cathy whirled around. “This isn’t San Francisco, Carrie. I knew we shouldn’t have let you go. But oh no, your grandfather insisted. He thought you were strong enough, and smart enough, to stay true to the values you’ve grown up with, and keep away from whatever immoral influences you might be exposed to out there. I guess he was wrong.”

  “I don’t even do them anymore.” But what was the point? It might be part of Carrie’s past, but to everyone else, it was like she’d done it yesterday.

  Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much satisfaction she got from doing them, how much more beautiful and creative it could be than the same old family gatherings and class photos, year after year.

  How much she’d missed it.

  “You have no idea who I was out there,” she said, shocked to find her voice shaky with tears. “Or what I learned. Or how hard it is to be me, here, some days. I feel so… trapped sometimes.”

  At that, Cathy grew still. Carrie didn’t normally speak to her mother that way. There was a certain satisfaction in finally telling her the truth.

  “I know I’ve been hard on you, Carrie,” said her mother, quieter now. “It’s just that, I’ve always wanted so much for you. It’s so easy to make mistakes. People don’t forget mistakes. I wanted to keep you from taking a path you might regret.”

  For a second, her mother’s face took on a faraway look that no child wanted to see, ever.

  “Mom.” She reached out a hand, but Cathy recovered.

  “You have a God-given talent, Carrie. It’s up to you to use that talent wisely. I only hope you’ll still have the opportunity to do so.”

  She left then, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Carrie had never been good enough to satisfy her mother. Grandpa Nate was the only one who’d ever truly supported her unconditionally, who’d encouraged her and lovingly bullied her into following her dreams.

  She’d never had her mother’s approval. So why, now, was her mother’s disappointment so unbearable?

  Carrie put her head in her hands and wept.

  *

  Ethan walked down the stairs to Carrie’s studio and over to her office where he found her, her arms crossed on top of her desk, cradling her head. His heart gave a little bump at the sight of that glossy hair, draping over her cheek like a wing of golden satin.

  He tapped on the door. Carrie’s head whipped up and she swiped at her face.

  “Your contact sensors are all done,” he said as she came to the door.

  She opened it and ushered him in. “Great.”

  Something was wrong. He heard it in her voice. Her shoulders were rounded and she kept her face averted. A frisson of alarm ran through him.

  “Carrie?” He touched her arm. She stopped but didn’t turn to face him.

  “What?”

  He stepped in front of her and leaned in. Her eyes were
red and swollen, her cheeks flushed and damp.

  “Carrie, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head and gave an unconvincing laugh. “I’m fine. It’s nothing. Really.”

  “Liar.” He took her elbow and led her into the office where she lowered herself onto the small couch. “Let me get you some water.”

  He found a coffee mug and ran it full of icy water from the bathroom tap.

  “Something’s upset you. How can I help?”

  Her face crumpled and the tears he’d interrupted returned. She put her fingers to her forehead, pressing against her skull as if that might stem the flood. Her hands were shaking.

  His anxiety heightened. She’d been afraid and upset when they’d first met, but she’d been completely in control. What could have undone her like this?

  “I’m f-f-fine, Ethan,” she managed.

  He handed her a tissue. “Try again.”

  She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Really, it’s nothing. Just business stuff.” She hesitated. “Oh, Hell. My mom found out about the picture.”

  Her voice broke.

  “And not just my mom. Terlecki, from the high school, printed off the picture and just happened to show it to my aunt, who showed my mom. I thought you said you’d taken them down.”

  There was no censure in her voice, only defeat. Like she’d never really expected that he could prevent the disaster from happening.

  “They must have gotten to it before I secured the links. We knew it was a risk. Carrie, I’m so sorry.”

  He felt terrible. He’d worked as quickly as possible, but honestly, he’d always known the chances of keeping this quiet were slim to none.

  She smiled crookedly through her tears. “It’s not your fault. I went to the high school. That’s probably what got Mrs. Terlecki nosing around.”

  Poor kid. All she wanted was to keep her private business private and now it was anything but.

  “Half the town knows by now,” she continued. “Every teenage boy in Cherry Lake probably has pictures of my pictures on his phone now. Who knows how far they’ve traveled on the internet. Between the cherry harvest and the festival, my family’s working flat out and now they get to have this juicy bit of gossip to deal with. Uncle Robert has been stressed out, my grandfather is an old man and my mom,” she paused and sucked in a fresh breath. “She was just here. Thought it would be best to deliver the news in person.”