Lynnette Kent - Luke's Daughters

“Right here.” Her grandmother held up a pair of white sandals with pink flowers on top.

“Those aren’t mine. I want my red sneakers that Daddy bought me.”

Grandmother Brennan brought over the yucky shoes. “These will look better with your outfit, sweetheart.”

Erin crossed her arms. “I…want…my…red…shoes.” She wasn’t gonna cry, like Jenny. But she wasn’t going anywhere in those stupid white sandals.

The door of the room opened, and Mommy came in. Jenny jerked away from Grandma Jennings. But Erin reached their mother first. “Tell her I don’t have to wear those shoes, Mommy. I want to wear my red ones!”

Jenny arrived. “I wanna wear my dress for Mickey Mouse!”

Mommy got down on her knees. She put one arm around Erin and one around Jenny. “Erin, sweetie, your red shoes are in the suitcase under the window.”

Erin flew to the bag and found her shoes right on top of all her other clothes. She sat down and started to pull one on.

“Socks first,” her mother said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Erin groaned. She put on the socks, then the shoes, and tied the laces herself. Daddy had taught her to tie her own shoes over spring break from school.

With Mommy to help, getting dressed and ready to go was easy. Jenny put on the plain yellow dress she was supposed to wear and let Mommy brush her hair. In just a couple of minutes they were all done.

Mommy’s new husband waited for them in the hallway. “All set for Disney World?” Jenny put her thumb in her mouth and hid her face in Mommy’s neck. He looked at Erin. “What do you say? Ready to go?”

Erin looked back at him. He’d told her to call him Matt. Mommy said she thought Daddy Matt would be better, since he was a part of their family now. Because Mommy asked, Erin tried to remember. But he didn’t feel like much of a daddy to her.

He was tall, and kinda big—bigger than Daddy, even if they were brothers. And he was more like Grandmother Brennan than Daddy. Daddy played games. He laughed and joked and called her funny names.

Most of the time, Daddy Matt talked about rules.

Suddenly, Erin didn’t know if she was ready for Disney World. “Mommy, where’s Daddy?”

“He’s right here, love.” She looked surprised.

“No. I mean my Daddy. I need to tell him something.”

Erin saw Mommy look at Daddy Matt. Then Daddy Matt came over and squatted beside her. “He had to go to…work, Erin.” Daddy Matt had blue eyes. Even when he smiled, his eyes stayed serious. “He said to tell you to have a great time in Florida. He’ll be thinking about you, and he’ll see you when you get back. Okay?”

When you were almost seven, you could usually tell what you could get out of and what you couldn’t. Erin knew she wasn’t going to see her dad again before they left. She sighed and nodded. “Let’s go.”

Daddy Matt stood up and took her hand. Erin went with him, with Mommy on her other side. Outside the front door, all the people who had come to the wedding were waiting. They started cheering and throwing bird seed from the little packets Erin had helped tie. She and Mommy and Daddy Matt ran in between the lines of people to the van waiting by the curb. Erin helped Jenny into her car seat and buckled her own seat belt the way Daddy had taught her.

Then, laughing and waving, Mommy and Daddy Matt shut their doors. They pulled away from all the people, and the car got quiet. “Next stop,” Daddy Matt declared, “is Disney World!”

Jenny yawned and closed her eyes. Erin looked out the window without answering, wondering why she didn’t feel so excited anymore.

SARAH HELD her breath as the picture developed, like a ghost materializing out of the mist. She hadn’t run a proof sheet this time. She wanted to see each print full-size right away.

There. More than twenty-four hours later, she was struck yet again by the sheer beauty of Luke Brennan’s face, the grace of his stance. From a professional—and personal—perspective, he made a truly breathtaking picture.

And the little girls were every bit as lovely as she remembered, as photogenic as she’d hoped. The energy of those children endowed each shot with an intense impression of…of…life.

“Pretty,” a voice commented behind her.

Sarah jumped, then swore. “You scared me!” She retrieved the tongs she’d dropped. “Why didn’t you knock, Chuck? You could have ruined everything.”

Her business partner—they’d inherited joint ownership of the photography shop where she developed her work—rolled his eyes. “The door was already open, so I figured it was safe. You’ve been in here for hours.”

He stepped past her and stared at the pictures on the drying table, arms crossed over his stomach, the fingers of one hand tapping his elbow. “Not your usual style, but pretty. Are you planning a calendar?” She could hear the sneering tone in his voice.

Sarah put the tongs down before she used them as a weapon. Chuck belittled her work whenever he got the chance. Why get upset about it now? “No. Those are some shots I took yesterday, that’s all.” She drew a deep breath. “What time is it?”

“After seven. I’ve closed the shop. Are you ready to leave?”

She’d printed the pictures in eight-by-tens. Some of them might look good even larger. “I think I’ll stay and work some more. Go ahead and lock up. I’ve got a key.”

“I know.” He smiled thinly. “You’re okay to stay here alone after dark? This part of town’s pretty much deserted on Sunday night.”

Sarah put confidence into her voice. “I’ll be fine.”

Chuck lifted a thin, pale eyebrow in doubt, but turned without a word and left the darkroom. Shortly afterward, while she was still mixing developer, she heard the back door shut and the roar of his Cadillac’s engine. She couldn’t deny the relief of finally being alone.

As she printed the larger versions of the beach pictures, though, she did ask herself exactly what she would do with them. The weekly news magazine she worked for, Events, didn’t publish “pretty” photos. Her New York editor wanted grit—the grittier, the better. She’d given him just that for six years now, first in Africa, more recently in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan.

They’d been a damned good team, she and James Daley, even after she ended their brief engagement. Despite the pain caused by James’s unfaithfulness, Sarah had stayed on the job. Anger and hurt feelings had, with time, given way to mutual respect; together they’d earned a notable reputation for delivering the story with his spare reporting and her uncompromising pictures.

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, James was gone. A witness to the shooting—she stood only a few steps behind him as he fell—Sarah remained at the scene and finished the story for James…for them both. She’d managed to work through the memory of his sightless eyes, the smell of blood and munitions in the air, the one ragged cry he’d given before dying.

Until that last morning, by a pit in a field outside Kabul, a vast cavern filled with the bodies of women and girls, when the shaking had gotten so bad she couldn’t hold the camera steady, and there wasn’t any way to make it stop. She’d seen herself falling into that grave. She could still hear the voices of the dead—James’s among them—crying all around her, waiting for her…

On a deep, shuddering breath, Sarah jerked her mind back to the present. This was not a war-raped field in Central Asia. This was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA, where the sun sank gently behind the dunes, shedding an amber light over little girls dancing on the beach in their best clothes.

Eyes closed, she focused on that peaceful scene, recalling each lovely detail. Gradually, her heartbeat slowed, the shakes went away.