CHAPTER 3
Mae
The market square at six in the morning belonged to no one, which was the only reason I was there.
Theo Hart was already crouched by the fountain with a light meter, because of course he was.
Jacket zipped to his throat, camera bag open on the wet stone, looking like a man who had been awake long enough to make several decisions I would disagree with.
His hair was still damp at the temple. I noticed, and then I noticed myself noticing, which was worse.
I had a shot list. Typed, numbered, five images mapped to five angles I could control. The arch from the west. Vendor row with bunting. Clock tower. Welcome sign. The green from the north. Clean. Manageable. The kind of list that made a grant committee feel confident about writing a check.
Theo took it, studied it, and handed it back with the careful expression of a man returning a child's drawing.
"Problem?" I said.
"It's very organized."
"That's not a compliment."
"It's not a criticism. It's a diagnosis." He tilted his head toward the east end of the square. "Light hits the arch from that side in about seven minutes. Your list has it from the west."
"The arch looks better from the west."
"The arch looks like a real estate brochure from the west." He adjusted something on his lens without looking at it. "From the east, when the sun catches the ironwork, it looks like a place somebody actually lives."
"I actually live here."
"Then you should know which side has the better light."
I walked to the east side of the arch.
I was four steps in before my brain caught up with my feet, and by then Theo was already repositioning the tripod with the efficiency of a man who had known I'd move. My jaw tightened. My pace did not change. I was not giving him that much.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"Look satisfied."
"I'm not satisfied. I'm cold. It's six a.m. and you haven't offered me coffee."
"You're not on my hospitality list."
"I'm on your shot list. That's worse."
The air shifted. Not golden yet — the minutes before, when everything is blue-gray and still and the cold sits flat on your skin. The square held us, a delivery van idling at the far end, and the coffee-stand woman unlocking her shutters.
"I need a figure for scale," Theo said, framing the arch. "Stand there."
"Use the tripod."
"The tripod doesn't argue with me."
"The tripod doesn't have a name on every permit in this town."
I stood by the arch. For scale.
He crouched, adjusted, rose, and walked toward me with the camera lowered. He stopped about a foot past where professional ended and pointed past my shoulder at the ironwork.
"Light's going to wrap from here" — his hand traced the air beside my neck, close enough that the warmth of his fingers arrived without contact, tracking the path like a line drawn on water — "to about here. If you stay when it hits, the arch frames behind you and the shadow falls — "
"I'm not in the shot."
"Test frame. I'll delete it."
"You won't."
He didn't deny it. He also didn't step back.
I also didn't step back. Which was the more alarming data point.
The sun arrived — fast, golden hour not being interested in our argument — and the arch lit up from the east and he was right, damn him, it was alive.
He raised the camera. Two shots. Lowered it. Looked at the screen instead of at me.
"Test," he said.
"Delete it."
"After I check the — "
"Now."
For one second, I thought he would argue.
He didn't. He deleted it while I watched, thumb pressing the button, screen going blank.
That was new — Theo conceding a frame — and I didn't know what to do with the small, inconvenient warmth it put below my collarbone, so I held the shot list higher and breathed through my mouth until it passed. It didn't pass.
"Vendor row. North angle."
"Vendors aren't set up."
"The stalls are. Crates, canopies — "
"You need life, Mae. Empty stalls are a catalog."
He was already walking. I followed, because stopping would have proved his point. I hated that more than the angle.
The vendor row in early light was already doing something I hadn't planned.
Sun caught the canopy tops and threw long shadows across the cobblestones.
Henderson's delivery had left three crates of apples by the usual stall — damp wood, cold fruit, steam rising in the new light like something a tourism board would stage and never get this honest.
And leaning against the apple crates: a hand-drawn sign, marker on cardboard, Earl's unmistakable handwriting.
LAUREL CREEK: COME FOR THE CHARM, STAY BECAUSE YOUR CAR WON'T START.
"That's not sanctioned," I said.
Theo's camera came up.
"No," I said.
Click.
"Theo."
"It's a local testimonial."
"It's sabotage with a Sharpie."
"It's specific. Committees love specific."
"Committees also love liability waivers."
"Only the memorable committees."
Behind us, the coffee-stand woman made a sound that was almost a laugh and immediately disguised it by banging a metal spoon against something. Great. We had an audience, a prop, and Theo Hart discovering the artistic value of Earl's inability to leave office supplies unsupervised.
I yanked the cardboard free. The top crate shifted. Apples rolled across the cobblestones, one bouncing off Theo's boot. He caught it without looking away from the viewfinder, which was annoying on several levels.
"Careful," he said.
"You're photographing vandalism."
"I'm photographing Laurel Creek before it has coffee." He set the apple back on the crate. "And before you fix its hair."
"The town does not have hair."
"Earl's sign suggests otherwise." He nodded at the tripod. "Light's moving."
We both reached.
His hand landed on the center column. Mine landed on his. Cold metal underneath. His fingers were warm. I hated that I noticed. I pulled back too fast. Which made it worse.
My palm stayed warm for the next four actions. I counted them because counting was what I did when my body made decisions without filing the paperwork.
He extended the legs without comment. I positioned the base without comment. We were being very professional about the thing we were not commenting on.
The tripod foot caught between cobblestones.
Theo crouched to free it one-handed, camera in the other, and his shoulder pressed against my hip.
A practical accident of geometry. He didn't move.
I didn't move. The coffee-stand woman was watching us from across the square with the expression of a woman composing a text to Doris.
"The foot's stuck," Theo said, from the level of my waist.
"I can see that."
"If you hold the column — "
I held the column. His hand worked the foot free and brushed my wrist on the way up. I pulled back too fast again and grabbed the shot list. Paper was safer. My wrist kept the impression of his knuckles long after his hand was gone.
He stood too close. The cobblestones were narrow. Neither of us stepped back.
"Your shot list," he said.
"What about it?"
"Let me show you something."
He turned the camera screen toward me. Three frames: apples, steam, canvas, Earl's unauthorized honesty just out of sight. Each one was better than anything on my list. Not because I couldn't see beauty. Because I kept trying to make it behave first.
"You keep making the town sit still," he said. "It's better when it moves."
"I don't need a critique of my — "
"It's not a critique. You know the town. You just don't trust it to photograph well without supervision."
The annoying part was not that he was right. The annoying part was that he was right before coffee, with damp hair at his temple and an apple at his feet like the square had started taking his side.
He held the camera toward me. "Show me what you'd shoot if the list didn't exist."
I took his camera.
Too fast — grabbed rather than accepted. The camera was heavier than I expected. The grip was still warm. My palm noticed before I could stop it. The strap slid around my wrist.
I raised the viewfinder.
The world shrank to a rectangle, and inside it — because I had not thought the geometry through — was Theo.
He stood where I'd been. Backlit. Not posing. Caught in the half-second before the charm arrived, one hand still reaching for the lens cap he'd forgotten to take back. I watched him build it: shoulders loosening, mouth finding its angle, ease arriving piece by piece.
"Hold still," I said.
"Mae — "
He didn't move. Not fast enough.
"You do this to me every time. You frame, you shoot, you take what you see. Hold still."
His hand dropped. The charm stalled halfway. Underneath it he looked like a man who had just realized the lens was pointed the wrong direction and didn't know where to put his face.
Something in my chest went briefly, dangerously unlocked. I locked it back. But the damage was already data.
I took the shot.
One click. No second chance.
For once, he had no instant answer. No angle. No charming little deflection packaged and ready. His eyes flicked to the camera, then back to me, as if he had to decide which one of us had become the problem.
I lowered the camera. He didn't reach for it. The morning was fully golden now, pouring down the vendor row, and Theo stood in it with his face unfinished and didn't fix it. He looked better before he did. Damn it.
My finger stayed on the shutter a beat too long. Not for another frame.
Three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough for the coffee-stand woman to definitely be texting Doris.
My phone shattered it.
Diane: Maple Falls posted sunrise content. Drone. Professional. I need a candidate image by 8 a.m. Not optional.
I showed him the screen. His jaw tightened, but the professional came back — not the full version, a working copy.
"The apple crates," he said. "The steam shot. It won't beat a drone for scale, but it beats a drone for feeling."
"Show me."
He turned the camera screen.
The crates. Gold light. Steam. Canvas overhead.
And at the right edge — my hand. Still on the crate from when I'd moved it.
Fingers curved around damp wood, early light catching them.
In the background, barely in focus, his shoulder.
Not his face. Not enough for a stranger to know him.
Enough for Laurel Creek to build a story out of it.
"My hand is in it."
"Your hand is why it works."
"My hand is in it and I'm reaching toward you."
Silence. The word toward sat between us like something I shouldn't have said out loud.
The coffee-stand woman was no longer pretending not to watch. My phone buzzed again.
Diane: ???
I could crop it. Lose his shoulder. Keep the hand, keep the light, keep the town. Safer. Cleaner. A campaign lead doing her job instead of reaching toward her photographer at sunrise.
Theo looked at the image. Then at me. For once, he looked away first.
A muscle moved in his jaw. I tracked it the way he tracked light, and the parallel was not comfortable.
"Send the wide version," he said.
"If I send the wide version, Diane sees it."
"She sees a town worth believing in."
"She sees exactly why she called us face and lens in a room full of people."
"No," he said. "It is not harmless."
My thumb hovered over the screen. Maple Falls had a drone. I had one honest frame, one impatient director, one photographer who looked too carefully, and a coffee-stand witness already halfway to a county-wide weather system of gossip.
I sent it.
Uncropped.
Diane replied thirty seconds later.
Diane: Good. Opening with this at 8. This is the face/lens proof.
Too late, then.
I handed the camera back. Our fingers didn't touch. I made sure of it, which was worse. My pulse did not cooperate.
"Eight a.m. meeting with Diane to review the full package," I said. "Bring the rest of the vendor shots."
"Mae."
"What?"
"You sent the good one."
"I sent the useful one."
"Same problem." He put the lens cap on. First try. "Different crop."
I turned toward the coffee stand. I needed something to hold that wasn't his camera or my phone.
Behind me, his camera powered down. The absence of the shutter left a specific quiet — the kind that meant he was watching me walk away with nothing between his eyes and my back.
At eight o'clock, that image would be on Diane's screen.
My hand. His shoulder. Diane's face/lens proof.
And the fact that I hadn't cropped either of them.