Page 13 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“See for yourself,” he said.
I took the envelope. It was old and yellowing. There was a postage stamp in the top right corner, and my mother’s name and the address to the lake house were written in a hasty scrawl on the front. The seal was broken. Inside was a stack of photographs and a piece of paper. I took out the piece of paper first. Someone had written in all capital letters, I KNOW.
I took out the photographs next and thumbed through them slowly, using the flashlight from my phone to illuminate them in the darkness. There must have been over a hundred pictures. The first dozen were snapshots taken in quick succession from a distance. They were of my mother. She was sitting at a booth next to the window in some diner. Her face was clearly visible in the shot. She looked upset. Across from her in the booth was a man. In this shot, I couldn’t see his face, just his hand reaching across the table to console my mother. In the next shot, his hand was on top of hers.
I glanced up at my uncle Hank. He was watching me intently.
“Do you recognize him?” he asked. “The man in the pictures with her—have you seen him before?”
I looked back down at the pictures. I turned to the next one. This one was taken at a different angle. I could see the man’s face in this one. He had a dark beard and a wide nose. The skin under his eyes looked sunken and gray. He was slightly balding and looked to be in his thirties. He was wearing a suit.
“No,” I said. “I’ve never seen him before.”
I flipped through the rest of the shots, but the man didn’t appear in any of the ones taken outside of the diner. They were all pictures of my mother with me and Seraphina. There we were in the front driveway of the lake house. My mother had Seraphina in her arms in one and she was unloading us from her SUV. There were pictures of us coming out of the supermarket in Hillsborough with Grandma Fairchild; the three of us in my uncle Hank’s truck; me and Seraphina swimming in the lake while my mother watched from the shoreline. I thought of the long-lensed camera Mr. Andrews had shown us in class—the telephoto lens he had told us about.
I came to the last photo, which stopped my heart. Because there was no illusion of closeness in this shot. The photographer was right there, one hand outstretched so that you could see it in the frame of the shot, and there I was by myself in the backyard of my grandparents’ house in Hillsborough, Connecticut, looking up into the lens of the camera, within reach. When I flipped it over, I saw something had been written on the back. Just one word: STOP.
Stop what?
“What are these?” I asked.
“I found them in the lake house. Under a loose floorboard in your parents’ old room.”
“What were you doing in the lake house?”
My father would flip once he found out Uncle Hank had broken into our house, gone through our things.
“I had questions,” Uncle Hank said. “I went looking for answers myself. And I think I found something. I don’t know what these are yet or what they mean, but I’m sure they mean something.”
As much as I wanted to argue with him, I couldn’t. Because these photos had left me cold and hollow and breathless. Had someone been following us? Had these photos been some kind of threat? And if so, why? What had my mother done to make someone want to threaten us?
“Do you remember who took this photo?” Uncle Hank asked.
I stared at the photo in my hand and shook my head. It unnerved me to the core, but I had no memory of its being taken.
“Maybe you remember something,” Uncle Hank said, more desperate this time. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Anybody hanging around that summer that gave you a strange feeling? It could even be somebody who seemed like they belonged there. Lord knows you had an army coming and going. Maybe a gardener or a maid? Maybe your mom was acting nervous or scared? Something small, something off. Any small thing might be something. It could help.”
“I already told you everything I remembered,” I said, resentment leaking into my words. Well, I’d told him almost everything. And he’d betrayed me.
He was so sure that my mother was dead, so sure that I had the answer to what had really happened to her—so sure that I held the key.
“There has to be something else,” Uncle Hank snapped at me. He raised his hand and for a moment I thought he might hit me or grab me, and I tried not to flinch. “There has to be something you haven’t told me yet.”
I didn’t answer him. “Does my father know about these?” I asked instead.
“I don’t know what Alistair knows or doesn’t know,” Uncle Hank said. “And he stopped listening to me a long time ago.”
“Maybe if he saw these—” I started, but Uncle Hank cut me off.
“This isn’t a Calloway matter anymore,” Uncle Hank spat. “I won’t go to those people again. They long ago made up their hearts and minds about my sister; they’ve made that very clear. I know they’re your family, Charlotte, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told your mother. They’re—they’re cold people. Grace never really understood until it was too late, and maybe you won’t either, but there it is. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter.”
I handed him back the envelope. “I can’t help you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Uncle Hank reluctantly took the photographs and rubbed his chin. He shook his head at me, as if I had disappointed him. “I know you’re a Calloway, Charlotte,” he said. “But you’re a Fairchild, too. You’re one of us. Don’t forget that.”
His words stung. I bit my lip and looked away, unsure of what to say.
“There’s this thing we do every year at your grandma’s house—a party for Grace, on her birthday,” Uncle Hank said, putting the envelope back into his bag, a bit resigned now that he wouldn’t get anything else from me. “She would be turning forty-three this year. It would mean a lot to Ma if you and Seraphina came.”
