She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the point wasn’t to become some expert photographer. It was to learn enough about how it’s done to get inside the mind of my mother, to figure out what the draw was for her.”
“And?”
“And I’m realizing now that I’m never going to figure that out. Not from this.”
Lark just stared at me, waiting, so I continued, understanding flowing into me even as the words came out of my mouth.
“Photography is too singular of an experience, I think. The way I feel when I’m taking pictures is completely different from the way you feel—and from the way my mother would have felt. It’s not one size fits all, even though I had hoped it could be.”
Lark pulled in a breath through pursed lips, held it, and then blew it out again before she spoke. “I hear what you’re saying, but just because that’s why you got into this in the first place doesn’t mean you should stop. Whether it helps you understand your mother or not, you should be doing photography for your own sake.”
I shook my head. “Yeah, if I enjoyed it. But I don’t.”
Her eyes filled with surprise and then hurt.
“I’ve enjoyed spending time with you, of course,” I added quickly, “but the picture-taking itself really hasn’t done anything for me. Mostly, it’s felt tedious, you know?”
Lark sat back, the hurt in her eyes lingering. “So all of this was for nothing.”
I felt bad for her, and I realized I should have reminded her along the way of my motivation. Somehow, she had managed to forget the one reason I was doing this at all. “Seriously, Lark, I’m really grateful for everything you showed me. More grateful than you know. It wasn’t a waste of your time. Okay? I learned a lot.”
“But we’re done. You don’t want me to show you anything else.” She met my eyes. “Do you?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I have a lot of other things on my mind.”
“I see.”
She grew silent, hurt clearly evident on her face, so finally I leaned toward her, searching for the words that would make her feel better.
“That first night over sushi,” I said softly, “I told you why I wanted to learn photography, so I could understand what my mother saw in it, what she liked about it. Do you remember that?”
After hesitating a moment, she nodded.
“I’ve been honest with you from the start. That’s all I wanted from it, but now I can tell that it’s not going to pan out. And believe me, I’m even more disappointed than you are.”
She seemed to take that in, and then her expression softened. “You really thought that learning to take pictures would help you understand why your mother took pictures?”
I nodded.
“And that if you knew that, you might know her a little better? Understand her a little better?”
“Yes.”
“And that if you could understand her, you might understand yourself? That you might even know what she would want you to do now?”
I laughed lightly. “Yeah, I guess I did. Pretty big leaps, I suppose. Dumb, huh?”
Lark reached for my hand and squeezed it. “No, not dumb. I can’t imagine making important choices without asking my mom’s advice. Of course you want to know what your mother would say to you now. I really do wish you could ask her. I wish you could just say, ‘Mom, what would you do if you were me?’ ”
“But she was me,” I said, and my voice seemed to break a little. I looked down, willing myself not to tear up.
“Then it makes even more sense.”
I stared at Lark’s hand on mine, liking the sensation. It was warm and soft, far softer than any hand I had ever touched. Even Rachel, who was so beautiful and delicate in other ways, had the rough hands of an Amish woman, of someone who had spent years hand-washing dishes and scrubbing clothes and working the garden and tending animals and more. Rachel’s hand in mine always felt solid and caring, but Lark’s hand in mine felt gentle and tender and silkier than anything I could ever have imagined.
“I just don’t know where I belong, where I fit,” I said. “I am not truly Amish, and I’m not truly Englisch. Which means, I suppose, that I’m…nothing at all.”
With her other hand, Lark reached up to my face and cupped my jaw, turning my head toward hers. “Oh, Tyler. Don’t say that. I’ll tell you exactly where you belong, where each of us belongs. With the people we love and who love us. Everything else is secondary.”
I considered that for a moment. “There are people back in Lancaster County who love me, that’s for sure.”
Her eyes narrowed. “There are people here who love you too, you know.”
Again, I nodded. “Of course.”
“So it’s no wonder you’re torn. But you know what this means, don’t you? It means you can’t make a wrong choice. You have love in either place.”