“I can see why. He looks so much like his mom.”
Miranda flipped the page and pointed to another shot, this one of Sandra and Cam, identical smiles beaming at the camera. “Check her out.”
“She looks so young.”
“Younger than us.”
And already a mom of a six- or seven-year old. Norah couldn’t fathom that. In the next photo, he wore a baseball uniform and mugged for the camera beside another man.
“Who’s this?”
“Cam’s dad. May he rot in hell.”
Norah lifted a brow. “Is he dead?”
“Officially, no. As far as our family is concerned, he might as well be.”
Studying the photo, Norah thought she could see something of Cam’s build in his father, but nothing more. Everything else was pure Campbell. “What happened?”
Grammy picked up the thread. “He and Sandra were high school sweethearts. Got married straight after graduation. It wasn’t an…easy marriage.”
“It was a mistake,” Uncle Pete said with an uncharacteristic scowl.
“It wasn’t a mistake because it led to Cam,” Grammy corrected.
“She should have dumped his ass right after Cam was born,” Uncle Jimmy put in.
“Well now, that may be. But that’s not how it happened. Waylan was the kind of guy who’s never satisfied with what he’s got. Always wanting something more, admiring the greener grass and all that. He took keeping up with the Joneses to a whole new level. When Cam was eleven, Waylan left in pursuit of his grand ambitions, abandoning them on the verge of bankruptcy. Just got up one morning, told Sandy he was leaving. No discussion, no argument. And he left. Without even telling Cam goodbye. The divorce papers arrived a few days later.”
Norah straightened in outrage. “Who does that?”
“The weak. They were well rid of him.” Anita tugged the album over and passed Norah a different one. “Better memories in here.”
The next album started with Reed’s high school graduation. He grinned, arms around both his parents in what appeared to be a high school gym. His cap was cocked rakishly atop a shaggy mop of hair and his chin sported a faint scruff of goatee. The camera flash glinted off the lenses of some truly awful black-framed glasses.
The man in question wandered back in from the dining room, clean-shaven and wearing a pair of horn-rims that accentuated his hazel eyes. The hair that had looked merely unkempt back then now edged toward attractively rumpled.
“I had no idea you were a hipster before it was cool,” Norah teased.
Reed came to peer over her shoulder and groaned. “See, told you. Blackmail material.” At her peals of laughter, he said, “Yeah, you keep on laughing. You’re in all this somewhere.”
“I am?” Norah immediately began to wonder which of her and Miranda’s antics they’d managed to capture on film.
Reed flipped a few pages, bringing up a shot of Norah doubled over with hilarity, hair hanging in wet ropes down her shoulders as multiple water balloons exploded around her. “See, wet t-shirt contest.”
“That’s a swimsuit under that t-shirt.”
“Didn’t you end up nailing Mitch with the water hose?” Miranda slipped into the chair beside her.
Mitch bent to look over her shoulder. “You totally did.”
“Hey, you boys unearthed contraband SuperSoakers. It was only fair.”
“We got our revenge.” Mitch flipped to the next page with a picture of him dangling her upside down from the knees after he’d wrested the hose away.
Miranda chuckled. “You’re so lucky that wasn’t me. I’d have pantsed you from that position.”
“I had no desire to be that up close and personal with your brother’s—” She could hardly say junk in front of Grammy. “—well. I was laughing too hard to retaliate by that point anyway.”