“I’m so sorry,” Sandra apologized again.
“It’s all right,” Wren reassured her. “But are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yup!” Sandra opened the trunk, and before Wren could say anything else, Sandra was already pulling out her camera bags.
“Hang on, I just bought a collapsible dolly,” Wren said.
“I see it.” Sandra grabbed the folded-up dolly and soon she had a stack of cases and bags ready to go.
“Kit Larson is the reporter we’re working with today,” Wren told Sandra as they crossed the parking lot to the building. “She used to cover the fashion and celebrity beat forMile High Marker.”
“Oh, yeah, the weekly out of Denver.”
They got to the front door and Wren held it open while Sandra pushed the dolly through. “She does more longform features now and asked if I’d do the photography for this one. I met her when she interviewed Barbie Gillis last year.”
Sandra paused to look at Wren. “Barbie Gillis. How cool was that, photographing her? I bet she made you laugh.”
Wren blushed, feeling the usual awkwardness whenever Barbie came up. “She’s a friend of mine, ever since our first shoot together. She insists on me being the photog for any of her appearances. Or at least I get first shot at it.”
They stopped at the front desk and checked in. The receptionist pointed them toward a meeting room. Kit had texted earlier, saying she decided it was better to do the first interview away from the camera, but to go ahead and start setting up as soon as they got there. Wren wasn’t surprised. She just hoped everything would still go as planned.
The quiet room at the Y felt like a world away from the chic studios or multi-million-dollar celebrity houses Wren was used to using. The walls were a muted beige, adorned with motivational posters that had seen better days, their corners curling slightly. A row of fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting a harsh glow on a ring of folding chairs.
“Let’s get all but two of these chairs put away off to the side by that desk, and then we’ll set up the lighting.” She grabbed the back of a chair. “Sorry this isn’t very glamorous.”
Sandra waved her off then folded a chair. “It’s all part of it, right?”
They got the chairs moved—Sandra insisting on doing most of the work, then Wren decided how to set up the room.
“We’ll want to start with the lighting. The key light needs to be set up at a forty-five degree angle to the subjects’ faces and at eye level, which we can adjust later once they get here. Then let’s get the umbrella and strobe set up over here, and the fill light will go on the opposite side.” Wren explained the hows and whys as Sandra unpacked and set up lighting equipment, then the camera’s tripod. Wren tethered her camera to her laptop so she could check the shots right after she took them and adjust lighting or poses as needed. Sandra listened attentively and asked great questions.
Wren adjusted her camera lens, synching the shutter speed to the strobe lights. The familiar and precise motions usually energized her, but today her hands felt heavy, as if the weight of her thoughts had transferred to them. In her head, she couldn’t stop replaying Sunday with Elias. How she’d said goodbye before he’d had a chance to tell her it was fun, but over.
Her hands stilled as she reflected on her pattern. All her life, she’d been afraid to stay somewhere or with someone too long. She left before there was a chance for everything to go bad, or to be taken from her. The combination of pushing Elias away before he could hurt her first, and now the purpose of this photo shoot, brought everything into sharp focus.
“Wren, you okay?” Sandra’s voice cut through her thoughts, bringing her back to the present.
“Hmm?”
“You have a serious look on your face. Did I set everything up correctly?”
“Yeah, you did a great job. I just got a little lost in my thoughts for a moment.” Wren forced a smile, pushing hersadness down where it couldn’t reach her voice. She couldn’t afford to let her personal life interfere with her work today. She was here to help Kit tell an important story, one that would help people, even save lives, and that required her full attention.
Sandra tilted her head, studying Wren with concern. “You sure you’re okay? Anything you want to talk about?”
Wren let out a soft laugh, the sound almost foreign to her ears. “I’m good. Just the subject matter today. It’s…a little personal to me.”
Sandra nodded, a touch of surprise in her gaze. Before her assistant could dig any deeper, Wren plunged into a lecture on shutter speed as she returned her focus to her camera, adjusting the settings, making sure everything was perfect. It was easier to concentrate on the technical details than to let her mind wander back to Elias. Or to her childhood.
The door to the room opened, and Kit Larson entered, followed by a man holding the hand of a little boy who looked like his Mini-Me. Kit smiled warmly at Wren and Sandra.
“Are you ready for us?” she asked softly, as if she were afraid to startle anyone. She turned her smile to the little boy who looked pensively around the room at the lights and the camera. Wren didn’t think he could be more than four years old. His father looked pensive too. He hunched his shoulders, head ducked, as if he were about to receive a blow between his shoulder blades.
The karate chop of life suckingWren thought. She didn’t need to hear the details of Kit’s interview to know what the man and his son had just been through.Are still going through, or else they wouldn’t be here. They’d lost their home through sudden, unmanageable debt.
“We sure are ready,” Wren said, instinctively crouching down until she was at eye level with the little boy. In his otherhand he clutched a tan-and-brown stuffed animal of some sort. “My name is Wren. What’s yours?”
The boy looked up at his father for reassurance as he brought the stuffed animal to his face and pressed it against his mouth. It looked like a hedgehog.
