chose to only speak freely with people he trusted, thus
 
 avoiding it.
 
 “Yeah,” she whispered, letting Jim think that he was right.
 
 Maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong. Minus the nesting, the
 
 home, and the kids bit. There was something missing.
 
 Something that photography could never give her. Or maybe it
 
 wasn’t missing at all. Maybe it was the parts of her that she
 
 knew weren’t missing that were the problem. The parts she’d
 
 always secretly longed to give but had never been able to.
 
 She was annoyed that she saw a flash of white-blonde hair,
 
 a sultry mouth, high cheekbones, and that youthful, naïve
 
 sadness again in the recess of her mind, where she couldn’t
 
 scrape it out.
 
 “I should get going,” Jim said, pushing up from the hard
 
 brown plastic chair. He never could sit still for very long. “I
 
 have another unhelpful workshop to give, then a talk
 
 tomorrow and I’m out of here.”
 
 “Back to photographing lions?”
 
 “No.” He grinned. “Polar bears this time. I decided to
 
 change things up. Got tired of the nice warm weather and
 
 thought I might like to try freezing my balls off.”
 
 “Good luck with that. The bears and the balls.”
 
 When she was alone, Adalynn thought about polar bears for
 
 a few minutes, then her thoughts strayed back to the interview
 
 she’d given the night before. Where that reporter had said
 
 there was a rumor about her preferring the company of
 
 women. She hadn’t been as discreet as she thought she was
 
 when she’d allowed herself, six months ago, to spend the night
 
 at a colleague’s apartment in Germany. How the hell had
 
 anyone found out about that and how would anyone have