firm she’d worked for since finishing college, Wendela’s Wedding Wonders, was a local institution, and Daisy was grateful for the job. The work was steady, the hours crazy and the income adequate, if not lucrative. There would never be a shortage of people wanting to get married. And okay, she did dream of branching out from weddings and portraits, because her deepest love was something she termed narrative nature photography.
At heart, she was a storyteller. Her photos offered intimate glimpses through her lens. She captured the fragile, ephemeral nature of the world around her with pictures that haunted her heart, arousing deep emotions from the simple grace of trees dipping their branches in the water, the abundance of a green-shadowed forest in springtime, the epic shape of granite crags above a gorge. In college, she’d always been under deadline pressure because her subjects would not be rushed—tadpoles transforming themselves, a fawn finding its way through a meadow, the stillness of a heron as it waited in the marshy shallows for its next meal.
Photography was where she’d found her artist’s voice and a passion for the work. The fascination had begun with the gift of a Kodak camera on her eighth birthday. She had captured a shot of her grandma Bellamy learning to Hula hoop that day, experiencing a moment of such satisfaction that it felt like a benediction. It was a moment that would never again be repeated; she had frozen it forever in time and memory, and despite the fact that it featured her own grandmother, there was something universal in the shot that anyone could understand.
That was the moment she’d discovered the power of photography. She often wished for more time to produce fine art with her camera, but even fine artists—and their small sons—had to eat. For a single mom, steady work trumped high art every time. And the photo snobs seemed determined to overlook a key fact. In the midst of a wedding, opportunities abounded for finding a transcendent moment. A good photographer simply knew where to look for them and how to capture them. At a wedding, you could find people at their most real. The same story played out in endless ways and infinite variety, and for Daisy, it held a kind of fascination.
She was intrigued by the mysterious alchemy that drew a couple together and compelled them to embark on a journey through life together. A camera, properly wielded, could tell the story, over and over again in all its manifestations.
Perhaps this was because Daisy longed to understand it for herself. Perhaps if she became the world’s foremost expert at capturing life’s happiest moments, she would figure out a way to find her own.
The wedding wasn’t perfect. In the middle of the toast, Andrea Hubble’s mother became tongue-tied and dissolved into tears. The bar ran out of champagne in the first hour, and the DJ blew a speaker. One of the bridesmaids broke out in hives from something she ate, and the five-year-old ring bearer went missing, only to be found fast asleep under a banquet table.
Daisy knew that within hours, none of this would matter. As the DJ broke down his set and workers disassembled the tables, the blissfully happy couple headed off in the night for the Summer Hideaway, the resort’s most secluded cabin. Her final shot, lit by the moon and her favorite off-camera strobe flash, showed them walking down the path toward the cabin, the groom lifting his arm and twirling the bride beneath it. No question the night would go well for them, Daisy thought, putting away her things with a restless sigh.
The wedding guests occupied Camp Kioga’s other lodgings—old-school bunkhouses, A-frame cabins or luxurious rooms in the main lodge.
In the work van on the way home, Zach cracked open a can of Utica Club purloined from the bar and held it out to Daisy.
She shook her head. “No, thanks. It’s all yours.” Contrary to her demographic—recent college grad—she wasn’t much for drinking. Truth be told, drinking had never done her any favors. In fact, the reason she’d become a mom at nineteen had everything to do with drinking. If Charlie ever asked her where babies come from, she would have to find a way to explain that he’d come from an abundance of Everclear punch and a weekend of supremely bad judgment.
“Here’s to you, then,” said Zach. “And to Mr. and Mrs. Happily Ever After. May they stay together long enough to pay off the wedding.”
“Don’t be such a cynic,” she chided him. In his own way, Zach Alger had had a rough go of things, too. They made a good team, though. He was more than an assistant and videographer to her. He was one of her favorite—though reluctant—subjects to photograph, with strong, angular features and unusual Nordic coloring, so pale he was sometimes mistaken for an albino. He was totally self-conscious about his white-blond hair, the kind that seemed to absorb color from other sources. Daisy had always thought it was cool. Some of the images she’d shot of him had been picked up commercially. Apparently his look—the pale coloring and wintry eyes—was popular in Japan and South Korea. Somewhere in the Far East, his face was selling men’s cologne and cell phone minutes.
Not enough to pay the bills for either of them, however. He was just out of college, too, skilled at high-tech media. What she liked most about Zach was that he was a good friend—nonjudgmental, easy to talk to.
“I’m just saying—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’re such a worrier.”
“Right, like you’re not.”
He had her there. Daisy didn’t see any way around being a worrier, though. Having a kid tended to do that to a person.
“Maybe if we pool all our worries,” she suggested, “we’ll generate enough energy to fuel the van.”
“I only need enough to make it to the end of the month.” Zach guzzled the beer, belched and fell quiet, staring out the window at the utter nothingness that was the town of Avalon late at night. The locals joked that the sidewalks rolled up by nine, but that was an exaggeration. It was more like eight.
She and Zach didn’t need to fill the silence with chitchat. They’d known each other since high school, and they’d both endured their share of trials. While she became a teenage mom, Zach had been dealing with his dad’s financial meltdown and subsequent incarceration on corruption charges. Not exactly a recipe for serenity.
Yet somehow they had each muddled through, a little worse for the wear but still standing. Zach was methodically working his way through a mountain of student debt. And Daisy had made a series of bad choices. She felt as if she were living life backward, starting with having a kid while still a teenager. Then came school and work, and all that was swinging into balance, but one thing eluded her. It was the thing they photographed nearly every weekend, toasted and celebrated by her ever-changing array of clients. Love and marriage. These things shouldn’t matter so much. She wished she could believe her life was just fine, but she’d be kidding her self.
It was a challenge to avoid looking back and secondguessing herself. She could have had a shot at marriage. A surprise Christmas Eve proposal had come at her out of the blue and sent her reeling. Even now, months later, the very thought of it made her hyperventilate. Thinking back about a night that might have changed her life, she flexed her hands on the steering wheel. Did I make the right choice? Or did I run away from the one thing that could have saved me?
“So, is Charlie with his dad tonight?” Zach asked, breaking the silence.
“Yep. They’re the dynamic duo.” She slowed the van to avoid a small family of raccoons. The largest of the three paused, turning glittery eyes to the headlamps before herding the two small ones into the ditch.
Charlie’s father, Logan O’Donnell, had been as messed up and careless as Daisy herself was, back in the teen years. But like Daisy, Logan had been transformed
