In Plain View Read Online Free PDF Page B

the way out to the road so I could empty the mailbox.
    Jenny never picked up the mail; Jenny never went near the road.
    Three months ago her single mother—my only sister—was the hit part of a hit-and-run. She died.
    Fucking boondocks.
    I got the call between flights on my way to a natural disaster in Mexico—earthquake? Killer bees? Hell, I don’t even remember. I got off one plane and onto another, and just that fast, the life I had was over. My new life consisted of a thirty-year-old ranch house, a ten-year-old Subaru station wagon and an eight-year-old niece. Jenny.
    The school counselor told me it’d be a big mistake to move her right now. Said Jenny needed stability. Same house, same school, same friends. So, here I am in the no-man’s land of the Chicago ’burbs. Harbor of White Flight. Republican stronghold. Protestant heaven. Journalist hell.
    News flash: Jenny wasn’t all that happy with me either.
    I crouched down next to her on the concrete step. “Been sitting here long?”
    She shrugged and continued staring at her shoes.
    “Sorry I kept you waiting.”
    No answer. She leaned over and poked the tip of her shoelace into one of the lace holes.
    “I got the job. That’s why I was late. We don’t have to move or anything. For now.”
    Thank goodness I had enough cash stashed away, I could afford to sit on my ass with her for the summer. Neither of us was in any shape to detail a life plan more complicated than dinner and the TV guide. But I’d told her from the beginning that couldn’t last. Besides the money, I needed to work. It kept me in circulation.
    It kept me from going insane.
    Jenny finally tossed her head at me, oh? and her purple plastic barrette unsnapped. A curtain of fine, brown hair, straight as her mother’s, drooped in front of her face.
    “Guess we should get you a key or something,” I offered. “So this doesn’t happen again.”
    “Kids aren’t supposed to have keys,” she mumbled to her shoe laces. “Kids are supposed to have somebody.”
    “Right.”
    Our after-school routine was loosely based on her mother’s plan of operation. We ate a snack, watched cartoons together, then she tackled homework while I ran through my weight program. Today, I scrapped routine. I threw the kid a bag of chips and went straight down to my darkroom to work, eager to see how my shots would develop.
    I had turned a portion of the basement into a work area as soon as I’d arrived. One small window had to be blocked off, but there was running water and plenty of space to hang prints to dry. I tied lines to plumbing pipes, bought myself some heavy-duty shelves and a shop table at the local hardware store. Boom, I was in business.
    Jenny hung around the first time I printed a roll. But she didn’t like the smell of the chemicals, which meant I usually had my privacy in the darkroom. Another bonus. Sometimes the hardest thing about coming to live with Jenny was simply having her around all the time.
    People are funny. If somebody said go into a damp, smelly basement and sit around for a couple of hours, it’d sound unpleasant to most, but I always felt refreshed after time in the darkroom. There’s a certain level of concentration that must be maintained, steps that happen in a certain order, and in the end if you do it right, you get something beautiful.
    Some people do yoga. I do photography.
    Photographing a death scene is a special challenge. There are very few shots that will play as acceptable for prime time, although the boundaries of acceptable have expanded in the last few years. I got everything through two baths and hung to dry when I heard a knock. The shot with the firefighter was a beauty.
    “Come on in.” I was hunched over the table, checking a wide shot with a jeweler’s loupe. There was a flare showing up in some of the shots that irritated me.
    “I’m hungry, Aunt Maddy.”
    “Oh, right.” I pulled myself away from the flare problem and cracked my neck. “What time