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Zane looked back at the picture. He’d studied it so many times that he’d stopped actually seeing it. Now, he tried to see Idina through Felix’s eyes. The dark curls. The heavy lashes. The shape of her smile.
His features. On somebody else.
A strange ache spread through his chest. He’d spent his entire childhood being told all the ways he wasn’t Gage. He didn’t look enough like Gage. He wasn’t as smart as Gage. Wasn’t as good as Gage. Wasn’t the son Irving wanted.
Nobody had ever looked at another person and said, “ She looks just like you.”
Rue stood, arms wrapped around one of Idina’s. They were tiny compared to Idina. They reminded Zane a bit of an elf, soft features, pointy ears that stuck out beneath a beanie, brownish-blonde spikes framing big brown eyes. They were attractive in that androgynous way some people have about them.
“They look happy,” Zane murmured to himself.
Idina wasn’t looking at the camera. She was looking at Rue, her smile wide and unguarded while Rue leaned into her side. There was something almost painfully ordinary about it.
His sister was happy. Zane hadn’t realized until that moment how badly he’d needed her to be.
“Do you have more?” Asa asked.
Zane nodded, quietly swiping. The first photos he’d seen dozens of times now. Casper and Quill at the pumpkin patch, their cheeks painted with matching orange Jack-o’-lanterns. Halloween costumes. The boys sitting on Santa’s lap, Casper grinning while Quill regarded Santa with obvious suspicion. Idina and Rue taking a selfie at a Broadway show holding up the playbill. Idina in her workshop that she shared with Reina in the warehouse district—one side filled with vats of wax, the other with items that looked more at home in a carpenter’s space than an artist’s.
Every picture had a story attached now because Reina couldn’t seem to send one without supplying context. Casper had insisted on carrying a pumpkin almost as big as he was. Quill had asked Santa if the elves were paid. Rue had surprised Idina with the Broadway tickets for their anniversary.
Zane knew these stories.
That realization made his thumb stall against the screen.
He knew family stories.
His hands trembled as he swiped to the older ones. The photos that had clearly been digitized. Felix noticed immediately. His fingers tightened around Zane’s hand, but he didn’t tell him to stop. Didn’t ask if he was okay. He simply held on.
The colors changed first. The crisp brightness of phone cameras disappeared, replaced by faded film and soft edges. Suddenly, Zane wasn’t looking through Reina’s life anymore. He was looking backward.
The first was a picture of his mom and dad—Irving—leaving for what he could only assume was prom or maybe homecoming. They looked impossibly young. That bothered him more than he’d expected. Bev had existed in Zane’s mind almost exclusively as his mother, already hardened and angry, but here, she was with smooth skin and carefully curled hair, wearing some hideous dress that probably hadn’t been hideous at the time.
Irving had an arm tight around Bev’s waist, but she was looking off to the side, face pinched, phony smile nailed into place.
“Jesus,” Asa muttered. “She looks thrilled.”
Zane huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh and swiped again.
There were photos of them on the beach, not just his mother’s family, but the Scott’s, too. Two families crowded together beneath the sun as if there had never been any distinction between them. Coolers and striped beach chairs littered the sand. Somebody had been buried up to their neck. In another picture, teenagers crowded together with sunburned noses and wet hair, arms thrown casually around each other’s shoulders.
Zane slowed down.
There was Bev. Irving. Mayim.
And Liam.
His thumb stopped moving.
It was clearly some kind of annual trip as there were several of them—each of the children looking slightly older—until they were quite obviously teens, and once again, Bev sat on a log by the fire, Irving beside her.
They’d caught her in a laugh. Not one of those phony ones but a real laugh, head thrown back, mouth open. Her cheeks were flushed from the fire, her hair wild around her shoulders. For one disorienting second, she didn’t look anything like the woman who’d raised him.
She’d been beautiful once. Young once. Happy once. Liam clearly thought so. He was staring at her like she hung the moon and the stars. Not at the camera. Not at his brother.
At her.
Zane swallowed. There was an entire story happening in that photograph. One nobody had ever bothered to tell him.
