Mother smiled in the professional-looking portrait, wearing a crisp white blouse and a necklace with a silver cross. Her light hair was pushed back in a headband, the rest falling in soft waves over her shoulders. She couldn’t have been any older than eighteen or twenty. Apparently, Mother hadn’t always been opposed to pictures. Imagining her as a young woman had always been difficult for Julia, but here was proof that Coralline Blackwood had once been fresh, vibrant, and beautiful. Still, Julia had trouble connecting the wide, genuine smile of the woman in the picture with Mother. She had never seen her smile like that. What had changed? Was it the loss of her first daughter that turned her into the woman Julia remembered? Or was it the affair, or obsession, or whatever it was her husband had with the albino and the circus? And why had Father covered Mother’s picture with hers?
She laid both photos on the desk, mother and daughter side-by-side. The shape of their faces and their features were nearly identical, the arch of the brows, even the way one eye was the tiniest bit lower than the other. She had never noticed the similarities before, but now it seemed eerie how much they resembled each other. They could have been the same person living in separate eras. No matter how much Julia might have fantasized in the past about coming from a different family, there was no denying she was Coralline Blackwood’s daughter.
With a thousand questions running through her mind, she returned the pictures to the frame and started putting it back together. Then she stopped. A small key had been taped to the front of the cardboard behind Mother’s photo. Her heartbeat picked up speed as she peeled off the key, removed the tape, and tried it in the locked drawer. It fit and turned. She held her breath and pulled open the drawer. A polished, wooden box sat alone and perfectly centered in the bottom, in stark contrast to the chaos in the rest of the desk. With shaking hands, she carefully lifted the box and put it on the blotter, relieved to see it didn’t have a lock.
She opened the lid and found a velvet drawstring purse and a red leather camera case. She took out the drawstring purse and opened it. Inside was a pearl necklace, matching earrings, and a silver hairbrush wrapped in yellowed newspaper. She stared at the white strands in the brush. It couldn’t be, could it?
She took out the camera case and set it on the desk. The clasp was broken and the brittle leather felt like grit on her fingertips. Working gently, she took the camera out of the case. Written in blue ink inside the case lid was a name: Lilly.
Was that Father’s mistress? If so, why did he have her things?
A thin piece of folded cardboard sat on the bottom of the box. Julia took it out and unfolded it. Red and blue paint flecked off the creases of a poster from The Barlow Brothers’ Circus. On the front, two clowns smiled and waved next to a pale-looking elephant standing on its hind legs. A woman dressed in a white evening gown sat in the elephant’s curled trunk, smiling with one arm in the air. It looked like the same woman from the newspaper clipping.
Julia picked up the camera and turned it over in her hands. It was a silver and black enamel Kodak with three round knobs on the top. Despite its age, it looked brand new. She released the lens, looked through the viewfinder, and pushed the exposure level. To her surprise, the camera clicked and the shutter closed. She wound the advance knob.
The camera had film inside.
*
The morning after finding the camera inside the locked drawer of her father’s desk, Julia woke up with a splitting headache. That second glass of brandy was a bad idea. Then again, it wasn’t every day you found out you had a dead sister and your father might have had an albino mistress. Not to mention wondering why your parents needed forgiveness for something to do with your sister’s death, and putting your foot down about something you believed in. All those jumbled up emotions felt like having the stomach flu—complete with trembling knees and the desire to throw up. If being the owner of Blackwood Manor Horse Farm was going to be this draining, maybe she wasn’t cut out for the job.
The leaden sky outside her window mirrored her frame of mind. Rain clouds hung like gray waves above the treetops, as if ready to break open and flood the earth at any second. If it were up to her, she would have stayed in bed all day. But there were too many things to do. Too many things to figure out and untangle. She crawled out from under her warm covers, got washed and dressed, and went downstairs. After a quick cup of tea, she put the camera and case from her father’s desk in her purse, threw on a coat and hat, and went out the mudroom door toward the barn. Hopefully, Claude would still give her a ride somewhere, no matter how mad he was about retrieving the nurse mare foal. The thought of riding alone with him for any length of time sounded as appealing as chewing sawdust, but how else would she get into town? Besides, she wanted to ask him a hundred questions, including if he knew anything about the camera. If they were in the truck together he wouldn’t be able to walk away.
When she was halfway across the lawn, Fletcher came out of the barn and ambled toward her, smiling. How could he be so cheerful on this crappy day? she wondered. When he reached her, she forced a smile and kept walking.
He stopped and turned. “Hey.”
“Morning,” she said.
He followed her. “I was coming over to the house to see you.”
“Why? What do you need?”
“I want to show you something.”
Without looking at him, she knew he was grinning. She could hear the smile in his voice. What is it with him anyway? Why is he always so happy? It’s annoying. “What?” she asked.
“Come over to my truck and see.”
“Can it wait? I have errands to run in town and I need to ask Claude for a ride.”
“It’ll only take a second,” he said. “Besides, you’re the boss around here and I need your okay. Just give it a quick look and I’ll run you into town after.”
She stopped and looked at him, sighing. Riding into town with him would be a lot better than riding with Claude, and she wasn’t really in the mood to ask Claude questions anyway. If he was mean and rude, she might say something she’d regret. Maybe by the time they got back she’d feel braver and have a better outlook. “Okay. What do you want to show me?”
Fletcher’s smile widened. “Great,” he said. “Follow me.” He led her across the lawn, toward a horse trailer hitched to his truck. On the way, they passed Claude fixing a gate near the barn driveway. He glanced up at them, then put his head back down, his eyes on his work. Julia clenched her jaw, a knot of dread twisting in her stomach. In her head, she was tough, but in reality she hated the thought of anyone being angry at her, even someone as ornery as Claude. And if he was still upset about the foals, he might not be willing to talk about anything.