"Not here." She looked at Emma, who was still sitting on the bench in her cream dress, very upright, her hands knotted in her lap. "Not in front of her."
Calvin Mercer had heard that sentence before, in this room and in others, from mothers and fathers and once from a grandmother who had insisted on being photographed without her wig. He knew what it meant. It meant there was a door, and the speaker was standing in front of it with her arms spread. He took his glasses off, folded them, and put them in his shirt pocket.
"Emma," he said. "That's your name? Emma?"
Emma nodded.
"I've got a back room full of old cameras. Some of them are older than your grandparents. There's one in there that takes pictures on glass. You want to see it?"
Emma looked at her mother. Her mother was looking at the floor.
"Go ahead, sweetheart," Adam said, in a voice that was trying very hard to be normal. "We'll just be a minute."