On Sunday the softboxes were off and the blinds on the front windows were half raised, and the studio was full of plain November daylight, gray and honest. Calvin let Natalie in at ten minutes to nine. He had made coffee. He pointed to the two chairs he had set facing each other near the posing bench, not too close, and then he went into the back room and left the door open a hand's width.
Claire came up the stairs at nine exactly. Natalie heard her before she saw her: long strides, a pause on the landing, a pause so long that Natalie thought she might turn around. Then the door opened.
She was tall, as Calvin had said, taller than Natalie by three or four inches, in jeans and a green Metro State hoodie and a canvas jacket. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy knot, and it curled at the nape of her neck, exactly as it had at one year old in a high chair in Baker. She had long fingers, a cellist's fingers, and she held her car keys so tightly that the edges must have been cutting into her palm. And she had Natalie's mother's chin. Of course she did. Natalie had known she would, and still it went through her like a current.
They looked at each other across the studio.
"Hi," Claire said.
"Hi."