“No, I want to be a photographer. A picture can capture everything. No matter how much people lie to you, their true selves are always revealed in their pictures.”
“Always, even when they know you’re taking them?”
She looked at him. “Especially then, because they try so hard to hide who they really are, it comes out in some other way in their body language, their expression.” She slipped her phone from her pocket. “Say cheese.”
Montgomery took his picture and looked down at it.
“What do you see there?” he asked, mildly curious.
“A troubled man. But a good one. You have a lot on your mind.”
“So, you think we’ll get through all of it okay?” He didn’t know why he was asking, but for some reason he wanted to know her answer.
“I don’t know, Travis. I don’t think anyone knows for sure. Especially us.” She glanced over at him. “What would you do today if you knew tomorrow wasn’t coming for you?”
“I’d go and see my father.”
“Why? To make peace with him?”
The image of him and his father getting drunk the night they had celebrated Devine’s getting the job at Cowl and Comely came into his head.
“No. I’d tell him to stay out of my life and let me run it the way I want to. And that I didn’t want or care about his opinion of me anymore.”
She stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment.
“What?” he finally said.
“That’s pretty much exactly what I said to my mother.”