Epilogue
LOTTIE
Saralynn Lennox is eleven days old and already has opinions about lighting.
She’s curled in the little woven basket I bought specifically for newborn sessions—knees tucked, fists balled, wearing a cream-colored wrap that took me four minutes to swaddle perfectly.
The studio is warm. The diffuser is running something lavender.
The backdrop is soft white muslin, and the window light is hitting at exactly the right angle, that golden late-afternoon glow that makes babies look like Renaissance paintings.
Everything is perfect. Except Saralynn has decided that she does not, in fact, want to sleep.
“She was out cold in the car,” Mads says from the velvet chair in the corner. She’s eating a granola bar like it’s her first meal in days, which it might be. “Dead asleep. Snoring. The second we walked in here she opened her eyes like she sensed a camera.”
“She’s Asher’s daughter. She’s suspicious of everything.”
“She’s my daughter. She’s suspicious and hungry about it.”
I adjust the wrap. Saralynn blinks at me.
Her eyes are that dark newborn blue that hasn’t decided what color it wants to be yet, and her hair—she has so much hair—is dark like Asher’s, curling at the tips.
She’s going to be stunning. She’s already stunning.
She just needs to close her eyes for approximately ninety seconds so I can get the shot.
“Talk to me,” I say, because background noise sometimes works. Babies who won’t sleep for silence will sleep for conversation. Something about voices being familiar. “Tell me something. Distract me. Anything.”
“Gossip.” Mads takes another bite. Chews. Considers. “Harold brought Grandma Hensley a bouquet yesterday. At her house. In front of witnesses.”
“From Delilah’s shop?”
“Daffodils. Wrapped and everything. Walked up her front steps in broad daylight like a man with zero shame.”
“Good for him.”
“Grandma Hensley told Jo she’s ‘evaluating her options.’ She has a spreadsheet.”
“She does not have a spreadsheet.”
“She has a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Categories include ‘punctuality,’ ‘romantic initiative,’ and ‘likelihood of dying before me.’”
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’s neighborly, 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 reading seriously, 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.
“Tonight,” Mads says. “Seven o’clock. Hazel’s house. Bring those lemon bars you made last week.”
“Those were for the boys’ teacher.”
“Make more. The book club deserves lemon bars.”
She leaves. The studio is quiet. Lavender diffuser still running. Light fading in the window.
I start packing up. Fold the backdrop. Coil the wrap.
Put the basket back on the shelf next to the other baskets—the wooden one, the wire one shaped like a heart that I only use for Valentine sessions.
My props are organized by color and size, labeled, inventoried.
This room is the one place in my life where everything is exactly where it belongs.
The rest of my life is less organized. Divorce finalized four months ago. Two eight-year-olds who treat furniture like gymnastics equipment. A house that still doesn’t feel entirely mine. A photography business I’m building from scratch in a town where I’ve lived for less than a year.
But this room. This room is mine.
I pick up my phone. One text from Emma:
Emma: The boys built a raft out of pool noodles and duct tape. It held for approximately nine seconds. Everyone is alive. Barely.
I type back: Coming tonight. Bringing the goods. Please don’t let my children drown before I get there.
Emma: No promises. Paul is supervising. He’s already rethinking every decision that led to this moment.
I smile. Set the phone down. Start editing.
Hazel’s house smells like cinnamon and chaos.
There are shoes by the front door in four different sizes—Jack’s work boots, Hazel’s sandals, Ellen’s sparkly flats, and Caroline’s black combat boots, which are parked at an angle that suggests she kicked them off while walking and didn’t look back.
Inside, the living room has been rearranged for book club: chairs pulled into a circle, Michelle’s pastry box open on the coffee table, a stack of the month’s book—some romance novel with a shirtless man on the cover—bristling with sticky tabs because these women do not mess around.
The book club is already in session, which means everyone is talking at once.
Michelle is perched on the arm of the sofa next to Jo, who is gesturing with a cookie.
Jessica has her legs tucked under her on the big chair, and Amber is on the floor leaning against Brett’s favorite ottoman, which Hazel drags out specifically for these meetings because Amber always ends up on the floor.
Hazel is in the kitchen doorway holding a pitcher of sweet tea.
Grandma Hensley is in the wingback chair with a notebook open on her lap.
Mads is in the corner rocker, nursing Saralynn under a blanket. Asher dropped her off twenty minutes ago and whispered “good luck” to the baby like she was being deployed.
Emma is cross-legged on the rug, laughing at something Michelle said, and she looks—settled. That’s the word. When she first got to Twin Waves, she was held together by caffeine and willpower. Now she belongs here.
I slip in with my baking dish and take the empty chair by the window.
“Lottie!” Hazel takes the plate. “You came.”
“Mads threatened me.”
“I suggested firmly,” Mads corrects without looking up from Saralynn.
“She said bring dessert or don’t come back.”
“That’s because your baking is a spiritual experience,” Jo says. “I had one of those bars last week and I saw colors.”
The conversation swirls. They’re supposed to be discussing the book—something about a firefighter and a librarian—but the discussion has veered into whether the hero’s grand gesture was romantic or a felony. Jessica argues it was both. Grandma Hensley is taking notes.
“A man who breaks into a library at midnight to fill it with roses is either deeply in love or deeply unwell,” Michelle says. “I can’t decide which.”
“Both,” Amber says. “That’s the appeal.”
“Grayson would never break into a library,” Michelle adds. “He’d buy the library. Then fill it with roses. Then present me with the deed and a spreadsheet of projected property values.”
“That’s romance for developers,” Emma says, grinning.