Chapter 1
When the time comes, he finds it remarkably easy to lie.
Paul sits across from Tom in the Stanleys’ muted blue living room, surrounded by stiffly posed family portraits that Judith can’t have liked, and lets the false words flow.
“That last night—the last time I saw her—Judith asked me to help her publish her photographs. And I said I would. Happily.”
He’s relieved he didn’t stammer or stumble, that he delivered the lie in his smoothest professorial voice, as if telling a student that the Leica was far superior to the Nikon, if you could afford it, or that black-and-white film, with its contrasts and shadows, could heighten the drama of any picture.
He takes a quiet breath to calm his jittering heart, thankful that Tom can’t know how sweaty his palms are against the fabric of his pants.
Tom looks weary and gray-faced but wary, too.
Paul has never met him in person before now but can tell grief has flattened him; it hasn’t been that long, after all.
Eight weeks, give or take, since Judith died.
Paul waited as long as he could before showing up, unannounced, on Tom’s porch; he thinks now that eight weeks may have been too soon.
But hell, eight months might have been too soon—there was no good time, so he may as well be here.
“She said that?” Tom squints, as if Paul’s words pain him.
He squinted like that when Paul introduced himself, too, because he knew who Paul was: the last person to see Judith alive, her professor, and a prime suspect—until the Harrington Police cleared him.
The dregs of suspicion still cling to Paul, of course, but Tom was a suspect, too.
He was cleared as well, and whoever killed Judith walked free.
As far as Paul could tell, the case had drifted into limbo.
“She did. She might have told you I’d been encouraging her to publish? Ever since she first shared her photographs with me. They were like nothing I’d seen before. She was incredibly talented. But I’m sure you know that.” Paul hopes he doesn’t come across as too eager or desperate to please.
“Yeah, she said you liked her pictures,” Tom says.
He makes it sound dirty, as if Paul had complimented his wife’s tits.
Paul doesn’t remember Judith’s tits; they were always primly covered, never outlined by the tight shirts and sweaters many of his young coeds wore, and besides, Paul wasn’t interested in her that way.
But when he saw her first self-portrait, he felt semi-aroused.
God, it was good! His response was only heightened by Judith’s cluelessness about what she had, what she could do.
Tom wouldn’t like hearing any of that, but Paul wishes he could convey how momentous it was, discovering Judith.
He remembers how she lingered after class for the first portfolio check.
He always tried to be kind about student work, unless it was one of the eager young men, younger versions of Paul himself, who came thrusting their imitative pictures in front of him like sacred gifts.
Judith’s name escaped him at first. Jennifer?
Janice? He finally found the right one, and thought it perfectly fit the timid, middle-aged housewife before him, her hand visibly trembling as she gave him the envelope.
He expected nothing from her photographs, just as he expected nothing from any of his students’ photographs.
He had a store of polite phrases ready for what he was certain he’d see inside: Lovely family you have.
Attractive scenery. Is that your cat? I like the green you’ve captured here.
But Judith’s pictures struck the smugness right out of him.
He couldn’t find words at first; they were just so good.
So genuinely, purely, goddamn good. The high drama of her light work, her sly use of angles…
but most of all, the range and nuance of emotion that shone through every scene.
Paul lost himself in looking, nearly forgot Judith was there.
He remembers thinking, I want these. Like her pictures were something he could steal—the way he stole groceries, books, booze, and clothes when he felt the urge.
He wasn’t proud of his stealing, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself.
Besides, he was good at it, and he’d never been caught.
It also helped his budget and gave him a buzz, made him feel like he was floating over the squalor of life in the city—just the way it had helped him escape the dreary reality of his suburban home when he was younger.
The buzz he got from stealing was intense—until it wore off, leaving him sprawled in a chair at what passed for his desk, fingering a green-and-yellow-striped necktie he’d probably never wear again or drinking straight from a bottle of top-shelf whiskey and staring out his grimy window into his neighbor’s grimy window across the narrow courtyard, wondering how this was his life.
How he was a small-time crook and a community college instructor all of a sudden instead of the towering photography talent he’d meant to be—the towering talent he’d been for a few brief moments in time.
When Marty Janowski at Harper’s had chosen one of his photographs—his lucky shot of two ragged but fierce young men slapping and shoving each other in front of a burning apartment in lower Manhattan—six years ago for a portfolio called “Urban Struggle 1960–65,” he’d thought for certain he’d be lifted to the upper echelons of lasting artistic fame.
There’d been a burst of near-fame—including glowing mentions of his piece in major newspapers and even a local TV interview, once—but the fanfare had died down quickly.
He’d had solicitations from other editors and gallerists after that, but whenever they considered his body of work, they could see how sadly anomalous the great fight photograph was, and one after another, they passed.
But there were no anomalies in Judith’s work; every print she’d brought him evidenced greatness.
It was painfully clear that she could tap right into the marrow of the world just by lifting the camera to her eye.
She made it look easy. He knew then that she could be what Paul never could: a towering talent.
It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, but once he’d endured a spasm of envy, he eased into his mentor role and was able to give Judith what she deserved: heartfelt, enthusiastic praise.
Judith flushed and stammered, thanking him, and then Paul told her, truthfully, that she really should try to publish her work in a magazine.
He fully expected another round of blushing gratitude, but her face changed and lengthened.
Her features set. She said no, and meant it.
Paul resented her once more for her firm, fixed denial of all the things she could easily have and he couldn’t.
He had never stopped submitting his work, never stopped gathering up his rejections and soldiering on—to no avail, thus far.
And here was his unassuming student, gifted with immense talent but unwilling to reach for the artistic notoriety she could pluck like ripe fruit from the branch of a bare tree.
Paul could have changed course then; he could have avoided her after class, denying her the chance to share her work.
Instead, he welcomed her whenever she lingered.
He knew what would be best for her and her work, after all, and he felt driven to convince her to submit, send out, and publish.
But aside from that, he was desperate for her pictures—they were gorgeous and surprising.
Addictive, even. Judith seemed equally desperate for his attention; he was fast becoming her sole mentor, cheerleader, and photography friend.
He believed he was helping her grow by feeding her technical knowledge, photography history, and the language of the field.
And by encouraging her, of course. He encouraged her more forcefully than he’d ever encouraged himself—and he sincerely felt and believed every last encouraging word.
He began to see himself as a crucial element in her artistic composition.
Paul knows that if Judith had lived, she’d agree.
But that’s now beside the point; Judith is gone, and Paul needs to convince her husband of something she never explicitly said to him. Otherwise, her pictures will sit in storage in this very house, and the world will never see them. Paul will never have the chance to make the world see them.
Paul refocuses on Tom, who sits across from him with his arms folded over his chest. There’s been a lull, but now Tom speaks again.
“Judith told me you wanted her to publish her pictures, but she always refused. She wasn’t interested in all that. I’m not interested, either.”
“It’s true that she refused. Every time.
Until that night,” Paul says, holding Tom’s gaze the way an honest man would do.
And he’s nearly honest, saying this to Tom; maybe Judith couldn’t admit to herself that she would have wanted this, but he believed he was carrying out her unspoken wishes, or the wishes she would have expressed if she’d gone on living, gone on hearing Paul’s urgings.
She was receptive to them, he knew she was; she would have come around, eventually.
“I have no proof she said it, of course. She didn’t put it in writing.
But, Tom, that was her last request. She was adamant.
Impassioned, even. Almost as if she knew…
” He lets the sentence trail off, worrying he’s gone too far.
When Tom grimaces and turns away, Paul wishes he hadn’t mentioned that night.
For his own sake, too. He’s been troubled, since then, by all the things he did and didn’t do that night, like ending class early and heading to his office instead of walking Judith out.
He was feeling sick at the time, and too weary even to press his case about publication.
He just wanted to tie up a few loose ends and go home.
He could tell Judith was troubled by his lack of attention and interest, but he was simply too exhausted to care.
When he learned of her death, he was truly shocked.
Depressed, even. But he was grieving more than Judith’s death—he was grieving the loss of his mentor role, too, as well as his access to her photographs.
He thought it would pass, that he’d stop thinking about her work, just the way he’d eventually stopped thinking of Judith and expecting to see her in class.
Instead, he grew fixated on her work, especially in the quiet evenings when he sat by a cracked-open window in his living room, wearing his winter coat, smoking cigarettes, and sipping rye.
The pictures were there, weren’t they, in her house?
Just sitting there, in the care of someone who didn’t know good photographs from bad, who had no idea that his wife was a towering talent—and what someone could do with that.
Someone like him.
Paul started to believe it was his duty—his calling, even—to bring Judith’s work to light.
He also thought it would help divert attention from the brutal ugliness of her death—which had landed on local and even national news—and refocus the public’s gaze on her brilliant pictures instead.
He would do that gladly, he thought, feeling noble and good as he exhaled a white cloud of smoke.
He would put aside his own ambitions—such as they were—and give himself over to championing Judith’s work.
And that exalted notion eventually brought him here, to Tom’s living room, face-to-face with a man still chest-deep in grief.