The studio was on the second floor of a brick building in Cherry Creek, above a shop that sold expensive candles, and at a quarter past six in October the light in the front windows had gone the color of weak tea. Inside, the light was something else entirely. It came from two tall softboxes on chrome stands and a round reflector held in a clamp, and it fell on the posing bench the way snow falls on a field, evenly, without favorites, so that nothing in its path could hide.
Natalie Cole had chosen the emerald blouse because the website said jewel tones photographed well against neutral backdrops, and she had chosen the cream trousers because they matched Emma's dress, and she had chosen this studio because it was the best one in Denver and Adam's mother had said, at Easter, with the gentle cruelty of a woman who had never once been refused, that it was strange there wasn't a single proper portrait of the three of them anywhere in the house. Natalie had smiled and said she would take care of it. She had then not taken care of it for six months. In September, Adam had booked the session himself, as a surprise, and shown her the confirmation email at breakfast with such open pleasure that there had been nothing to do but thank him.
Now she sat on the end of the bench with her long chestnut hair arranged over one shoulder, her knees angled toward Adam, her hand resting on Emma's back. Adam stood behind them in his navy blazer, one hand on Natalie's shoulder, the other on Emma's. Emma, twelve, in a simple cream dress with a high collar she had complained about all the way from Highlands Ranch, sat between her parents with the frozen expression of a child who has been told to relax.
The photographer had introduced himself at the door as Calvin Mercer. He was a Black man of about fifty-five, with close-cropped gray hair and rimless glasses and a black studio shirt with the sleeves rolled twice. He moved quietly. He had a way of adjusting a person without touching them, a small lift of two fingers that meant chin up, a tilt of the palm that meant turn toward the light, and he had already made Emma laugh once, by asking whether the collar was strangling her and offering, in a grave voice, to call the authorities. On the walls around them hung his framed sample portraits: a grandfather in a cardigan holding twin babies like loaves of bread; three teenage brothers in matching white shirts, trying not to grin; a woman in a wheelchair with her chin lifted and her eyes absolutely certain; a bride alone, laughing at something outside the frame. The reception desk by the door held a small brass lamp, a guest book, and a bowl of peppermints wrapped in cellophane.
He had taken perhaps twenty frames. The shutter made a soft, expensive sound, like someone closing a good book. Then he took one more, and lowered the camera, and did not raise it again.
He was looking at Natalie. Not at the composition, not at the light on her cheek, but at her, the way a person looks at a stranger on a train platform and feels a door open somewhere in the back of the mind.
"I'm sorry… have you been here before?"