a way to find her own.
The wedding wasn’t perfect. In the middle of the toast, Andrea Hubble’s mother became tongue-tied and dissolved into tears. The bar ran out of champagne in the first hour, and the DJ blew a speaker. One of the bridesmaids broke out in hives from something she ate, and the five-year-old ring bearer went missing, only to be found fast asleep under a banquet table.
Daisy knew that within hours, none of this would matter. As the DJ broke down his set and workers disassembled the tables, the blissfully happy couple headed off in the night for the Summer Hideaway, the resort’s most secluded cabin. Her final shot, lit by the moon and her favorite off-camera strobe flash, showed them walking down the path toward the cabin, the groom lifting his arm and twirling the bride beneath it. No question the night would go well for them, Daisy thought, putting away her things with a restless sigh.
The wedding guests occupied Camp Kioga’s other lodgings—old-school bunkhouses, A-frame cabins or luxurious rooms in the main lodge.
In the work van on the way home, Zach cracked open a can of Utica Club purloined from the bar and held it out to Daisy.
She shook her head. “No, thanks. It’s all yours.” Contrary to her demographic—recent college grad—she wasn’t much for drinking. Truth be told, drinking had never done her any favors. In fact, the reason she’d become a mom at nineteen had everything to do with drinking. If Charlie ever asked her where babies come from, she would have to find a way to explain that he’d come from an abundance of Everclear punch and a weekend of supremely bad judgment.
“Here’s to you, then,” said Zach. “And to Mr. and Mrs. Happily Ever After. May they stay together long enough to pay off the wedding.”
“Don’t be such a cynic,” she chided him. In his own way, Zach Alger had had a rough go of things, too. They made a good team, though. He was more than an assistant and videographer to her. He was one of her favorite—though reluctant—subjects to photograph, with strong, angular features and unusual Nordic coloring, so pale he was sometimes mistaken for an albino. He was totally self-conscious about his white-blond hair, the kind that seemed to absorb color from other sources. Daisy had always thought it was cool. Some of the images she’d shot of him had been picked up commercially. Apparently his look—the pale coloring and wintry eyes—was popular in Japan and South Korea. Somewhere in the Far East, his face was selling men’s cologne and cell phone minutes.
Not enough to pay the bills for either of them, however. He was just out of college, too, skilled at high-tech media. What she liked most about Zach was that he was a good friend—nonjudgmental, easy to talk to.
“I’m just saying—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’re such a worrier.”
“Right, like you’re not.”
He had her there. Daisy didn’t see any way around being a worrier, though. Having a kid tended to do that to a person.
“Maybe if we pool all our worries,” she suggested, “we’ll generate enough energy to fuel the van.”
“I only need enough to make it to the end of the month.” Zach guzzled the beer, belched and fell quiet, staring out the window at the utter nothingness that was the town of Avalon late at night. The locals joked that the sidewalks rolled up by nine, but that was an exaggeration. It was more like eight.
She and Zach didn’t need to fill the silence with chitchat. They’d known each other since high school, and they’d both endured their share of trials. While she became a teenage mom, Zach had been dealing with his dad’s financial meltdown and subsequent incarceration on corruption charges. Not exactly a recipe for serenity.
Yet somehow they had each muddled through, a little worse for the wear but still standing. Zach was methodically working his way through a mountain of student debt. And Daisy had made a series of bad choices. She felt as if she were living life backward, starting with having a kid while still a teenager. Then came school and work, and all that was swinging into balance, but one thing eluded her. It was the thing they photographed nearly every weekend, toasted and celebrated by her ever-changing array of clients. Love and marriage. These things shouldn’t matter so much. She wished she could believe her life was just fine, but she’d be kidding her self.
It was a challenge to avoid looking back and secondguessing herself. She could have had a shot at marriage. A surprise Christmas Eve proposal had come at her out of the blue and sent her reeling. Even now, months later, the very thought of it made her hyperventilate. Thinking back about a night that might have changed her life, she flexed her hands on the steering wheel. Did I make the right choice? Or did I run away from the one thing that could have saved me?
“So, is Charlie with his dad tonight?” Zach asked, breaking the silence.
“Yep. They’re the dynamic duo.” She slowed the van to avoid a small family of raccoons. The largest of the three paused, turning glittery eyes to the headlamps before herding the two small ones into the ditch.
Charlie’s father, Logan O’Donnell, had been as messed up and careless as Daisy herself was, back in the teen years. But like Daisy, Logan had been transformed by parenthood. And when she needed him to take Charlie for the night, he gladly stepped up.
“And what about you and Logan?” Zach pried.
She sniffed. “If there’s anything to report, you’ll be the first to know.” Things between her and Logan were complicated. That was the only word she could think of to describe the situation. Complicated.
“But—”
“But nothing.” She turned a corner and emerged onto the town square. At this hour, no one was around. Zach lived in a small vintage walk-up over the Sky River Bakery. As teenagers, they had both had jobs there. Now a new generation of kids managed the giant mixers and proofing machines in the wee hours of the morning. Hard to believe, but Daisy and Zach weren’t the kids anymore.
She swung into a parking spot. “I’ll be in the studio by ten tomorrow,” she said. “I promised Andrea a sneak peek by next Saturday.”
“Geez,” he groaned. “Do you know how many hours I shot?”
“Actually, I do. It’s only a sneak peek. I like this bride, Zach. I want to make her happy.”
“Isn’t that the groom’s job?”
“She has four younger sisters.”
“I know. They couldn’t stay away from the camera.” He shouldered open the passenger-side door and stepped down. The glow of the streetlights turned his hair to amber.
“Maybe they couldn’t stay away from you,” she suggested.
“Yeah, right.” He was probably blushing, but in this light, she couldn’t tell. Zach had never been much for dating. Though he’d never admit it, he’d been carrying a torch for Daisy’s stepsister, Sonnet, since preschool.
“‘Night, Zach,” she said.
“See you tomorrow. Don’t stay up too late.”
He knew her well. She was usually pretty wired after an event and couldn’t resist loading the raw files. She liked to post a single, perfect teaser shot on her blog to give the bride a taste of things to come.
Her own place was an unassuming small house on Oak Street. She took her time letting herself in. One of the worst things about raising Charlie with a guy she didn’t live with was that she missed her son like mad when he was with his father.
She locked the door behind her, and the all-pervasive silence took her breath away. She’d never been very good with all-pervasive silence. It made her think too hard, and when she thought too hard, she worried. And when she worried, she made herself insane. And when she went insane, that made her a bad mom. It was a cycle that refused to end.
Maybe she should get a dog. Yes, a friendly, bouncy dog to greet her at the door with swirls and yips of delight.