Garrett steered her in, past a dining room littered with pie plates. Jordan smelled pumpkin pie, cinnamon, coffee. Garrett’s father was half asleep behind a newspaper; he bid a sleepy hello, and Garrett’s mother came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron.
“Jordan dear, you look like you’ve been crying. Family squabble? These things happen at holidays. Every Christmas I swear this is the year I’m going to scratch my cousin Kathy’s eyes out if she makes one more condescending remark about my cranberry sauce. Let me get you some cocoa . . .”
Soon Jordan and Garrett were sitting with whipped-cream-topped mugs in his bedroom, door left ajar after Mrs. Byrne’s habitual twinkling “Don’t get into any trouble, you two!” Garrett swept the pieces of a half-finished model airplane out of the way.
“The Travel Air 4000,” he said, self-conscious. “I know model kits are for kids, but it’s the plane I learned to fly on when I joined up . . . What happened, Jor?”
“I’ve sent my stepmother into hysterics and possibly destroyed my father’s marriage,” Jordan said. “How’s that for a Thanksgiving squabble? I’d rather have someone scratching my eyes out over cranberry sauce.”
Garrett tugged her into his chest, and Jordan inhaled the comforting smell of cocoa and model airplane glue. He didn’t interrupt while she blurted out the rest. Garrett never tried to offer advice when anyone was upset, just hugged and listened. “What are you going to do?” he asked when she was done.
“Grovel to Anna, hope she forgives me.” Jordan wiped her eyes on his green sweater. “You never believed my crackpot theories about her, did you?”
“You’re not one of those girls at school always making things up, Jor. You’re not crazy. You saw clues. Maybe you were wrong about what they added up to, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”
“No, I was right—Anneliese was hiding something. But I was jealous when Dad wanted to bring her into the family, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, and that made me more interested in my theory that she was dangerous than the possibility that there might be another explanation. A harmless explanation. So I ended up hurting everyone.” The humiliation stung red-hot. I haven’t really come very far from that little girl who told herself her mother had gone away to become a movie star because that was a better story than the truth.
“Look on the bright side,” Garrett said. “Your stepmother isn’t some sinister Nazi, just a nice lady who makes punschkrapfen.”
“I was so stupid.” Lurking around her darkroom linking up dramatic theories, thinking she was so clever and observant. Thinking she was J. Bryde, future Pulitzer winner—what a joke.
“I have a lot of making up to do.” And you’d better get started, Jordan told herself. Because face it: you’re not going to be the next Margaret Bourke-White or Gerda Taro. You’re just an idiot girl who thought you could see like a camera, and all you ended up doing was hurting everyone you love. But you have a good family, if you don’t ruin things with them, and a good future. So go home, and start being grateful.
“I should get back,” she said, setting aside her cold cocoa.
“I’ll drive you.”
But they ended up pulling over halfway there, Garrett pulling his Chevrolet coup up next to the river when he saw Jordan was crying again. Because she was remembering that first photograph of Anneliese, the photograph that had started everything, wondering how that feeling had been so wrong—that surge of swift, sure recognition, of knowledge. Knowing that she had taken one of the best pictures of her life, knowing that in it she had seen something hidden and true and important. But it was all wrong. She hadn’t seen anything at all.
“Come here,” Garret said, kissing her in the dark car by way of comfort, his warm lips tasting like cocoa. Jordan twined her hands tight around his neck, squeezing her eyes tight shut. In a few more minutes she’d have to go back home, face her dad again, start forming an apology for Anneliese, but not yet. Garrett was pulling her collar open; Jordan hesitated a moment, then slipped the buttons of her blouse all the way down, and pulled his hands around toward the clasp of her brassiere. She could feel his surprise—this was where they usually stopped—but Jordan pulled him close for another kiss, and he gave a soft groan and