Page 41 of Safe With You

She looked back at the screen for another second before climbing out of her chair and making her way around the table.

“Can I see?”

I turned the laptop toward her.

Rachel stood at the microphone with both hands wrapped around her notebook. Her shoulders were still a little tense, but the nervousness she’d carried to the stage had already started to soften around the edges.

“Was she scared?” Mila asked.

“A little.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes people get nervous when everybody’s looking at them.”

She studied the picture. “But she still did it.”

“She did.”

I clicked to the next image.

Mrs. Williams sat beside her husband with a tissue pressed beneath one eye while he smiled at her over the rim of his coffee cup.

“She crying.”

“She liked the poem.”

“People cry when they like stuff?”

“Sometimes.”

Mila thought about that for a second. “Grown-ups are weird.”

I laughed. “You’re not wrong.”

The next few photographs moved across the screen slowly. Denise laughing beside the stage. Maya reaching across the café counter with a latte. The little girl I’d photographed on the floor with a picture book spread across her lap.

Then Luna appeared.

She stood behind the counter with a stack of mugs balanced against her hip, her head tipped back slightly as she laughed at something outside the frame. One curl had fallen loose near her cheek, and there was something unguarded about her expression. She hadn’t known I was watching.

That was probably why I liked it.

Mila leaned closer.

“She pretty.”

I glanced at her. “You think so?”

“Mhm.” She pointed toward the screen. “She look happy.”

I looked back at the photograph.

“She does.”

“Is that the bookstore lady?”

“The bookstore owner.”