The Photographer by Mary Carter (best summer books TXT) 📕

of Lucia,” Amelia said. “Why do you have it?”

“I took a few shots of her.”

“What does the X mean?”

“It’s not—”

“Why do you have it? WHAT DID YOU DO TO LUCIA?”

I backed away from her toward the kitchen island.

Fritz stood up. He looked like a wild animal. A speeding train was coming toward me. Head forward like a bull, he ran straight in my direction. He stopped abruptly when he was two feet away and pulled his upper lip back with disgust. “You are some sick pervert.”

His words hit me in a bad place. I tried to control myself. I held my voice low. “I’m sorry.” I had to say the right thing.

“How dare you use my image?” he growled. “How dare you bring your depravity into our home?”

Natalie looked up. She was watching her father. Her face was pale.

Amelia burst into hysterical sobs. “You should be down on your knees with gratitude to us,” she said between her sobs. “Are you mocking us? After all we did for you.”

“Did you do something for me?” My breath was catching in my throat. “Remind me.”

“You used us.” Amelia spoke through clenched teeth.

I was in a tunnel of rage—having difficulty allowing air into my lungs. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.” In that moment I hated Amelia with every molecule in my body.

“You are repulsive,” Amelia said.

“Mom,” Natalie said. “Enough!”

“It’s OK.” I tried to make eye contact with Natalie. “I’ll leave. As soon as I can get a moving truck.”

Amelia took long strides down the hallway toward the front door, grabbing a ring of keys off the hall console table. “You have more shit downstairs. I need to see all of it.”

“No.” I followed her, but she was fast. In an instant she was out the door, down the front steps. I was behind her. I refused to allow her into my computer, my files, my home. Whatever she thought she was going to see, she was wrong. I caught up to her at the top of the exterior stairs that led down to my garden apartment. I held her arm to prevent her from descending. She wrenched away from me. I ran ahead of her and put my body in front of hers, on the step below her, to block her way.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“It’s my private apartment,” I said. “You can’t enter without notice.”

“Bullshit.” She pushed me aside.

I stepped back to catch myself, but my foot didn’t make contact with the step below me. My feet shuffled to get a hold, but I fell to the stone steps and rolled sideways down the remaining stairs. I landed at the base.

Perhaps this was the way it was meant to end. I felt the cool cement beneath my face. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Amelia’s blurred face appeared over me, contorted in a sick grimace, and her breath was briefly suspended. Fritz was standing behind her.

“What did I do?” she whispered. “No, no, no, no.”

Both of Fritz’s lips were pulled back to reveal his gums and teeth. “We need Delta out of here today,” he said.

Amelia moaned—a sound from deep inside her. “The baby.”

I felt my hip bone and the side of my face against the cement. I felt moisture between my legs. And a viselike sensation around my abdomen.

Amelia knelt by my side. “What did I do?”

“Mom, you pushed Delta?” It was Natalie’s voice in the distance.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Amelia grabbed Fritz’s wrist.

“Calm down,” he said.

I was watching both of them, as if in a film—as if I were slightly removed. I noticed the shadows in Amelia’s face, hollow spaces that made her look old.

“This baby is my life,” Amelia said. “My life.”

“I hate you,” Natalie hissed from the top of the stairs.

“Go upstairs, Natalie,” Amelia said. “Now.”

“No.” Natalie didn’t move.

“Delta, let me help you,” Amelia whispered to me.

I felt blood running down my legs. Amelia’s gaze landed on my bare foot, which was covered in blood. It had run all the way down my leg.

“No, no, no, no!” she wailed.

A weight on my chest pressed me to the ground.

Up the stairs, I saw Natalie’s outline, then her gleaming eyes, her lanky arms, her charm necklace with the clay heart and the zigzagged line down the middle. Fritz led her up to their house. I was left alone with Amelia.

She helped me up. My body was pounding. She helped me inside my apartment. “We need to go to the doctor,” she said.

“I think it’ll be OK,” I said.

“No. No. No.” Amelia’s eyes were glazed.

I told her I needed to lie down. She insisted I go to the doctor.

Right now I’m the child’s mother. And I need to talk to my baby.

I’m the child’s mother. Delta Dawn.

And did I hear you say, he was a-meeting you here today,

To take you to his mansion in the sky?

It was my loss. It was my baby.

Amelia drove me to the closest emergency room in downtown Brooklyn. I told her that I would go in by myself. I needed privacy. I’d been asking for privacy when she pushed me down the stairs. This time she didn’t dare to object.

Late that night I was released from the hospital. I called Amelia. “I lost the baby.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Two days later Natalie knocked at the door of my garden apartment and let herself in. I gathered her parents didn’t know where she was.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “About everything.”

I placed a stack of shirts in my suitcase, which was open on my bed. I packed my sweaters, one by one. Then my pants. Dresses. Bras. Underwear.

“It’s OK,” she said. “I understand.”

She seemed composed.

“You’re not upset?” I said.

“At least you’re choosing your own life.”

I shook my head. “I’m not someone to look up to, Natalie.”

“I want to go with you,” she said.

I thought about the furniture in her room, her desk, her bed. I was overwhelmed trying to picture all her belongings in the moving truck. It