Izzie bent at the waist to look at the leaden sky through the window. Max had never seen so much unrelieved gray, a shade somehow different from California storm clouds. “Looks like it’s going to snow some more.” Izzie shook her head. “We don’t usually get much snow until after Thanksgiving.” Her eyes lit up with childish delight as she looked back at Max. “But that’s okay. Now we’ll have a white Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
Max sensed something from Cameron, a restlessness, a throb of something she couldn’t define. Without words, he was telling her to get on with looking at Evelyn’s album.
Witt got the chili. Max decided she’d share, though he didn’t know it yet. Izzie wafted away, leaving behind a subtle flowery fragrance and the warmth of her smile.
“How long you gonna stall?” Witt seconded Cameron’s push.
Max didn’t answer. The place wasn’t busy. Coffee perked behind the counter. Through the open window of the kitchen, her burger sizzled on the grill. She really didn’t have an excuse.
“It’s not as if it’s going to tell us where Cordelia is. It’s a bunch of pictures.”
“A start,” Witt insisted.
What he didn’t say was that they had nothing else. Max came here to find Cameron’s sister. The photo album was the first thing someone, anyone, in Lines had offered them. Still, she hadn’t come to delve into Cameron’s past, their past together. She hadn’t come to bring the pain of losing him out into the light of the snow-covered countryside, nor into the light of Witt’s blue gaze. And that’s what might happen when she looked in that album.
“Oh, look, it’s starting to snow.” She put her fingertips to the cold window, belatedly remembering the boy’s window-washing efforts. Ah well, she’d wipe her prints off with a napkin. For now, she wanted to watch the light flakes and to forget for a moment why she was here.
“I love the snow. I used to make snow angels all the time. That’s always the first thing I did when it snowed deep enough.” In the reflection caused by the light behind her and the dark sky beyond the glass, she saw not her grown-up self, but a child laughing, dressed in navy snow pants and lying in pristine snow, her arms and legs swinging.
“You were born and raised in the San Francisco area.” Witt paused. She didn’t turn to see the look on his face. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “Where’d you play snow angel?”
She cocked her head, never taking her eyes off the flakes that could almost have been rain if they hadn’t fallen so slowly. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Must have been Tahoe.” Her mother had taken her to Tahoe when she was six, two years before she died.
“Max.”
She knew what he wanted, like Cameron, always something she wasn’t ready for. The book’s plain cover shrieked at her. She left the snow and the pleasant memories and turned to Witt. Concern shone in his blue eyes. She’d gotten used to seeing that lovely shade of blue. Cameron’s eyes had been brown.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” She wouldn’t let Witt see her fall apart all over again because of Cameron, the way she had those first weeks after his death, watching Lost Horizon again and again until she couldn’t see past the ache of holding her tears in. Touching his things, his trinkets, listening to his music... Until she’d thrown out the VCR and hidden the box beneath the bed.
Pushing aside Witt’s glass of water, she shoved the book at him. “You open it.” Not the words of defeat, but the sound of command. She was not a coward, and she would get through this.
Without question, he turned the album his way and opened to the first page.
Max waited, worrying her bottom lip.
Somehow she knew Witt held her destiny in his hands.
Chapter Twelve
“Who is it?” she couldn’t resist asking.
He described what he saw. “By the clothes they’re wearing, looks like the fifties. Two women and a man. He’s got his arm around the one.” Witt looked up. “Think the other is Evelyn.”
“No names or anything written underneath.”
“Not even a year.” He flipped the page. Described the scenes, more of the same people. Then an older man. Cameron’s grandfather, Evelyn’s father?
A baby appeared. Pictures of the christening filled four pages. Still no names, no dates. She assumed they were Cameron’s parents and the child was his sister, older by one year.
Max couldn’t stand it anymore. She sidled around the booth and slid in next to Witt. He made little room—on purpose, she was sure—forcing her to scrunch up next to his big, warm thigh.
Another baby. More photos of loving parents, an indulgent grandfather, perhaps taken by a doting aunt. This time the child had to be Cameron.
With so few pictures of Evelyn, the album might well have belonged to Cameron’s family. Or Evelyn might never have had a life of her own.
Page after page of the Starr family presented itself. Cameron in Little League, camping trips, his hair blond and beautiful as a young child, growing darker as he sprouted.
Max kept her hands in her lap, afraid her fingers might act on their own and trace the lines of the Cameron’s childhood face.