Chapter 37
Sawyer
He called Priti Anand on a Monday morning, four days out from the Bennett wedding, and told her the feature could run whenever she needed it — full access to two seasons of photography, quotes from vendors if she wanted them, no conditions attached, no request for approval over the final copy.
"You're not going to want to see the draft first?" she asked, surprised. "Most subjects want at least a look before it goes to print."
"I trust you to write it honestly. That's actually the whole point.
" He said it plainly, meaning it. "Write what you actually see when you look at the place.
That's all I ever wanted the first piece to do, and it didn't, because I let someone else decide how it got packaged. I'm not making that mistake twice."
She agreed to run it the following week, ahead of the print schedule she'd originally planned, and Sawyer hung up feeling something settle in his chest that wasn't relief exactly — more like the particular, unglamorous satisfaction of doing the right thing without needing anyone to watch him do it.
He spent the rest of that week the way he'd spent most of the last two — working, mostly alone, the studio quieter now that Milo had started splitting his evenings between editing and whatever careful, tentative thing was happening with Del, the two of them apparently finding their own way back from their own small rupture faster than Sawyer had any right to expect from his.
He built the gallery slowly, over three nights, going back through every wedding of the season and pulling the frames he'd never delivered to any client because they weren't the client's to have — Josie steadying a swinging light line in the rain at Caldwell, Josie crouched at a child's shoelaces in storm-blue light, Josie mid-laugh with frosting on both hands, Josie standing at the edge of the reception tent at Whitfield watching a couple dance while something unguarded and hopeful sat plainly on her own face.
Six weddings' worth of a woman he'd fallen in love with without meaning to, caught in the specific unposed truth he'd spent a whole career learning how to find, and had apparently been finding, without fully admitting it to himself, every single time she was anywhere near his lens.
He had them printed properly — not a phone gallery, not a link she'd open once and forget, but real prints, the kind that took time and cost more than he let himself examine too closely, bound into a book by a printer two towns over who did his wedding albums and asked no questions about why a man was ordering a full album with no couple's names on the cover.
He didn't know, finishing it, whether it would matter.
He didn't know if two weeks of space, however honestly given, would be enough to undo nine days of exactly the mistake he'd promised her he was done making.
He thought about Milo's warning — you're trying to skip past the not-knowing by deciding the worst version is already true — and made himself sit with the uncertainty instead of resolving it early, the way he'd been practicing, badly, for two weeks now.
He drove out to the orchard the morning of the Bennett wedding same as every other wedding this season, gear loaded, timeline memorized, and found Del at the barn instead of Josie, the same as the last time he'd shown up uninvited.
"I'm not here to push," he said, before Del could say anything. "I'm here to work. That's all. I'll do my job, I'll stay professional, and I'll leave when it's done, exactly like she asked."
Del studied him for a long moment, something in her expression softer than it had been two weeks ago.
"She knows you're coming. She's not avoiding you today, for what it's worth.
She's just going to be doing her job too, same as you, and I'd let today just be that, if I were you.
Whatever happens after is a conversation for after. "
"Understood."
"Good." Del hesitated at the barn door, and then, quieter, almost gentle: "For what it's worth, Sawyer — she's been different this week.
Not sad, exactly. Like she's carrying something she's already decided about, and just waiting for the right moment to say it out loud.
" She didn't elaborate further, and Sawyer didn't ask her to, because pushing for more than she'd offered felt like exactly the kind of managing he'd promised himself he was finished with.
He carried the album out to his truck instead, set it carefully on the passenger seat, and drove the rest of the way to the site with no plan beyond doing the work in front of him honestly, and letting whatever came after arrive on its own timeline instead of his.
The season's last wedding was waiting for him at the end of the drive, string lights already going up in the distance, the orchard heavy with fruit on every branch, and Sawyer parked, gathered his gear, and left the album exactly where it was — not a plan yet, not a grand gesture rehearsed and ready to deploy the second an opening appeared, just a true thing he'd made, waiting for the moment, if it came, when she was actually ready to receive it.