One Golden Summer

Prologue

Agreat photograph makes you think you know the subject, even if you’ve never met. A great photo reaches out and pulls you inside the moment, so you can feel, smell, and taste it. And this, by all accounts, is a great photo.

I stare at it, and just like that, I’m seventeen.

I hear them across the bay. It’s the end of summer, and those three voices are as familiar to me as the weight of the camera between my hands. The older boy is calling out to the other two—his brother and the girl, who lie on the floating raft in their bathing suits, sunny-side up.

I’ve been at the cottage since the end of June, watching them swim and flirt and fly around the lake in their yellow speedboat. Each of them is beautiful. So sun-kissed and free.

They climb into the boat. The oldest drives. His brother and the girl sit in the front. I stand on the edge of the dock, adjusting the aperture.

It happens in the shortest blink of time.

I hear the boat. Their laughter over the engine. I look up to see them heading toward me. I bury myself behind the lens. They enter the frame.

Click.