I laugh so hard I almost bump the tripod. Saralynn startles, scrunches her face, then settles. Almost. Almost asleep.
“What else?” I whisper.
Mads is quiet for a beat too long. “Justin asked about you.”
My finger hovers over the shutter. “What?”
“At the marina. He asked Emma how you were settling in. If the boys liked their new school.”
“That’s neighborly.”
“Lottie.”
“It’sneighborly,Mads.”
“Sure. And Harold brings Grandma Hensley daffodils because he’s interested in horticulture.”
Saralynn’s eyes close. Her breathing slows. The little fists unclench.
I hold my breath.Wait three seconds. Five. Ten.
Asleep.
I shoot. Click. Click. Click. The shutter is barely audible—I’ve got it set to the quietest mode, the one I use for light sleepers and nervous parents. Every shot is perfect. The light, the wrap, the curl of her fingers, the impossible smallness of her. Eleven days old and she fits in my two hands.
This is why I do this. Not the weddings Emma shoots, not the portraits or the events. This. The tiniest humans at the very beginning, before the world gets to them. Before they learn to pose or perform or pretend. Just pure, unfiltered new.
“She’s perfect,” I say.
“She screamed from two to four a.m. last night. Asher walked her around the living room singing sailor songs because it’s the only thing that works.”
“Sailor songs?”
“Don’t ask. He picked them up from Justin. Apparently Spencer men only know melodies about boats and heartbreak.”
I switch angles. Shoot from above. The basket casts a soft shadow, and Saralynn’s dark hair fans out against the cream wrap like a brushstroke. I’ll edit these tonight after the boys are asleep, in the quiet hours when the house belongs to me and my laptop and the glow of the screen.
Speaking of the boys. The studio has its own entrance—a side door off the driveway with a small waiting area and its own restroom. In here, everything is pristine. White walls, clean floors, organized shelves of props and wraps and tiny knitted hats. But when I step into the main house later, it’ll be a different planet. A skateboard in the hallway. A fishing net draped over the banister. Someone’s shoe (just one) on the kitchen counter. A half-built LEGO contraption on the dining table that Mitch swears is a “shrimp boat with rocket launchers” and I’ve learned not to argue.
The boys are at Aidan’s. Emma offered to take all three of them for the afternoon, which is either the most generous act of friendship in human history or a cry for help disguised as kindness. Those three together are a natural disaster with sneakers. I give it two hours before someone ends up in the water.
“You should come tonight,” Mads says, shifting Saralynn’s diaper bag off her shoulder. “Book club. Hazel’s house.”
“I don’t know if I’m officially in book club.”
“You’ve been to three meetings.”
“I sat in the corner and ate Michelle’s scones.”
“That’s membership. We take the readingseriously, but the discussion usually goes off the rails by page three.”
“I don’t have strong opinions about romance novels.”
“You will after one meeting.”
I cap my lens. The session is done—I got everything I need. Saralynn is still asleep, and I’ve learned to never wake a sleeping baby for “one more shot.” One more shot is how you get a screaming infant and a ruined backdrop.
I lift her from the basket. She weighs nothing. She smells like baby soap and laundry detergent and that specific newborn smell that disappears by month two and you spend the rest of your life trying to remember. I hand her to Mads, who tucks her against her chest one-armed, automatic, the way you do when you’ve been holding babies since you were fourteen.
