tree.
Then Maya appeared.
Not the secret photographer’s images.
Liam’s.
Maya laughing with wind in her hair.
Maya kneeling beside a sandcastle.
Maya standing waist-deep in the Gulf.
Maya reading.
Maya carrying sandals.
Maya asleep beneath a towel.
She stared at them.
“I look happy.”
Liam shrugged.
“You were.”
She pointed at one.
“My marks are really obvious.”
“Yeah.”
He said.
Maya looked at him.
“You don’t think they ruin it?”
Liam frowned.
“Why would they?”
She started crying.
Liam panicked.
“I didn’t say anything bad.”
“No.”
She laughed through tears.
“You didn’t.”
Then he said something I still remember.
“I take pictures of what happened.
Your skin happened too.”
It was such a ten-year-old sentence.
Simple.
Unpolished.
Perfect.
Maya printed that photograph.
The one where she stood in the Gulf.
She put it beside her mirror.
Gwen did not see the children for four months.
During that time, she
