Wren pov
My father's house smells exactly the way it always has, old wood polished with lemon oil, faint herbs from the kitchen, and that closed-in air of windows that rarely open wide enough. I've walked through this scent my entire life, and it's never once made me feel safe, not fully. It's more like stepping into a photograph where everything looks right but the focus is just a little soft, leaving you unsettled in ways you can't quite explain. I try not to think about that too directly. Some truths feel safer undeveloped.
Warren is in the kitchen when I arrive. He's already made tea and sliced the lemon cake he only buys when I visit. It's such a small, deliberate thing, his way of saying 'I see you, I remember', and it tugs at something tender in my chest I never quite know what to do with. He asks how I'm sleeping, how my courses are going. He asks if I've been eating properly with Caden gone, in that careful tone of a man who already suspects the answer is no but offers the question like a quiet kind of love.
Conversations with my father have always felt like pictures I framed wrong. All the elements are technically there, the warmth, the concern, but something essential sits just off-center. I've never been able to name what's missing. Maybe that's the point. Maybe not knowing is its own protection.
"The other night," I say, stirring my tea slowly, "you asked about the dreams."
He wraps both hands around his mug, knuckles whitening just a fraction. "Did I?"
"You called at midnight, Dad. You asked if I'd been having the dreams again."
A beat of silence stretches between us. I watch his face, searching for cracks.
"I worry about you." His voice is easy, warm, practiced. "With Caden gone. I thought you might be having trouble sleeping."
"Caden doesn't know about the dreams. I never told him."
Something flickers across his expression, too quick to catch fully, and vanishes. He looks down at the table, then back at me, eyes gentle in that way that usually melts my defenses. "He must have mentioned something. You know how your brother is, he tells me things without thinking."
It sounds reasonable. Caden 'is' the open one, the thread that keeps us stitched together with constant messages and check-ins. Part of me wants to lean into that explanation, to let it settle like sugar in the tea. But something stops me. A quiet, growing unease that's been building for days now, since the gallery, since Rhett's steady presence, since that strange woman's questions. It coils tighter in my stomach, a suspicion I can't yet voice. What if the version of my family I've been carrying is incomplete? What if there are shadows I've been carefully avoiding?
I almost push. The words rise in my throat, 'What aren't you telling me?' ,but I swallow them. The fear of breaking this fragile thing between us wins. For now.
"How's the photography going?" he asks, shifting seamlessly.
The change in direction is so smooth I nearly miss the redirection. My heart aches with it.
"Good," I say, forcing a smile. "I'm putting together a submission for the Reyes Fellowship."
His face brightens, genuine pride shining through. "That's wonderful, sweetheart. Your mother would have been so proud."
The words land softly, but they come right after the shift, before I can steer us back. It feels like a gentle hand on the wheel, guiding us away from dangerous ground. I hear it, the careful timing of a man protecting something, or someone, my throat tightens. I want to believe it's just parental worry. But the doubt lingers, sharp and persistent, mixing with the ache of missing my brother and the confusing pull I feel toward Rhett. Everything feels tangled lately.
I finish my tea. I say the right things, thank you, the cake was perfect, the garden looks beautiful. I let him show me the new beds he's been tending since retirement, rows of flowers and herbs he nurtures with patient hands. It's easier to follow his lead than to confront the quiet fracture I sense in our history.
"Take some photographs before you go," he says, squeezing my shoulder. "I've done new work on the east side. You'll like the light there."
I always do. Photography is how I hold the world still long enough to understand it. How I chase truth when words fail me.
>>>
I spend nearly thirty minutes in the garden, camera in hand.
The afternoon light is generous, soft gold spilling across the new rose beds. The flowers are exactly the kind of subject that usually soothes me, tended, growing, alive with quiet resilience. But today my hands tremble slightly on the lens. I frame shot after shot, but my mind keeps drifting.
It isn't just the dead man in the news or Joel Pryce. It's this, the childhood I've carried like a well-worn negative might be missing pieces. Events I thought I understood could have been something else entirely, distorted by love, by protection, by fear. I've been walking through life with an undeveloped roll in my pocket, choosing not to step into the darkroom. Because what if the truth changes everything? What if my father's careful warmth hides something heavier?
I photograph the roses up close, their petals fragile and veined. I photograph the house from the outside, its familiar lines suddenly foreign. Then I frame the kitchen window because the light hits just right, and again, because my father is visible through the glass, on the phone. His posture catches me. Shoulders tense. Hand pressed flat against the counter like he needs anchoring.
Click.
I go home with the roll burning a hole in my bag.
>>>
It's past midnight when I develop the film in my tiny bathroom darkroom. The red light bathes everything in a bloody glow, turning ordinary objects into something intimate and exposed. My heart beats louder than usual as the images emerge.
The garden shots are beautiful, clean lines, perfect exposure, technically strong, emotionally safe.
Then I reach the kitchen window frame.
I sharpen it carefully, adjusting focus until my father's face resolves. He's on the phone, free hand pressed hard against the counter. His mouth is tight, controlled in a way I've never seen when he looks at me. Not the gentle worry of a father checking on his daughter, not the vague concern he showed over tea.
No. This is deeper.
I lean closer, breath shallow. It's fear, raw, whole-body fear. The kind that hollows you out when someone is telling you something you prayed you'd never hear. His eyes are wide but guarded, jaw clenched like he's holding back a storm.
My stomach drops. Tears prick hot at the corners of my eyes. This is the man who made me lemon cake and asked about my sleep. The man who's always been my steady ground. What could make him look like that? And why does it feel connected to me, to the dreams I've hidden, to Caden's absence, to the growing sense that my life is being watched by forces I don't understand?
I sit on the cold tile floor in the red light, staring at my father's terrified face for what feels like hours. The emotional weight presses down on my chest until it's hard to breathe. Part of me wants to call him right now, demand answers, bridge the distance I suddenly feel yawning between us. The other part, the scared daughter who still needs her father to be safe, wants to shove the print away and pretend I never saw it.
But I can't unsee it. The off-center frame of our family has finally slipped into focus, and the picture it reveals is cracking my heart open. Whatever secrets he's guarding, they're no longer just his. They're mine too. And as the red light hums around me, I feel more alone than ever, caught between the love I still feel for him and the terrifying possibility that the man I trust most might be protecting me from a truth that could shatter us both.