“That Leica alone could be worth over $1000,” I said, stepping forward. “The Canon, too. And that light meter looks mint.”
The man’s head snapped toward me.
But Lois looked stunned. “Really? That much?”
I nodded.
“Please don’t sell these until someone appraises them properly.”
The man scoffed. “Don’t listen to her. She’s trying to cost you a sale.
Realistically, nobody wants to buy this stuff. Not even collectors.” He gestured dismissively at the table. Lois’s polite smile hardened just a touch.
“Thank you, sir. But I think I’ll take the young lady’s advice and get them appraised, anyway.”
Then he turned on his heel and stalked to a black SUV parked at the curb. The engine roared to life.
He sped away, tires squealing. Lois walked me to my car a few minutes later, still thanking me. She noticed the bumper sticker for my online business and smiled.
“I’ll be sure to recommend you to my friends.”
I smiled back, but the warmth didn’t reach my chest. The man’s warning clung to my skin like humidity. It was two lanes back at first, then one, and then sitting in my blind spot, matching my speed exactly.
I tried to tell myself it was a coincidence, that maybe it wasn’t even the same car, but in my gut, I knew it was him. I exited the freeway early, turned into a supercenter parking lot, and weaved through the rows of parked cars and minivans that seemed to stretch for acres. Twenty minutes later, I turned into my driveway.
The relief was immediate. I grabbed my bag and was walking up to my front door when I heard tires screech as a car braked hard behind me. I spun around, and fear washed over me like a bucket of ice.
It was the SUV. The man leaped out and started marching straight toward me. My keys were already in my hand.
I got the door open, threw myself inside, and slammed the door shut. He started pounding on the door moments later. “You think you can humiliate me?” he roared.
“You don’t know who I am. You don’t get to ruin my deal and walk away.”
I backed away from the door, pulse racing in my ears. He pounded harder.
I heard something crash — a planter? I pulled out my phone and dialed 911 just as I heard another crash outside. The dispatcher calmly told me that officers were on the way.
The pounding on the door started up again, punctuated by shouted curse words. Until the police got here, I was on my own. More pottery smashed outside.
I moved away from the door and peeked through the living room window. He picked up one of my planters and threw it against my front door. Sirens rose in the distance, getting closer, a welcome crescendo.
He didn’t seem to realize they were for him until the cops were moving toward him. The officers arrested him for harassment and trespassing right there in my driveway. After the police left, I stood on my porch for a long time, breathing quietly, letting the adrenaline drain away.
Then, I quietly tried to put things back in order. I swept the broken pottery into a pile and replanted my herbs and flowers into old buckets I found in the garage. I was watering the last plant when a car pulled up.
She climbed out carefully, holding a weathered leather bag close to her chest. “Sorry to come here unannounced,” she said. “I looked up your business from your bumper sticker and found your address on your site.
I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course,” I said. “Is everything all right?”
She beamed. “Oh yes.
I took the collection to the shop you mentioned. They were thrilled. They said it could be worth over $7000.”
She held the bag closer, like it were fragile.
“This one wasn’t with the others. My husband kept it on his nightstand. He said it was broken, but he kept it for sentimental reasons because it was the first camera he learned on.
I thought you might want it.”
She held the bag out to me. As I took it, my eyes landed on something that made time stop. There was a bluish-green stain on the case, faded but unmistakable.
I’d made it when I was ten, during one of my chaotic art phases. I’d knocked over a jar of paint in Dad’s studio, right on his camera case. The stain never came out.
He’d laughed about it and said it gave the bag character. It had to be a coincidence, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I opened the bag. Inside was a Canonet 28.
The lens casing was cracked clean through, spider-webbed in a way that made my chest ache with recognition. Tears blurred my vision. I could barely breathe.
“Lois, was your husband’s name Mike?”
She looked startled. “It was. But how did you know?”
I couldn’t speak.
My throat was too tight. “Did you read the label?” She leaned in, confused. “No… it’s under the camera.”
The words came out on their own, pulled from memory.
My voice cracked as I touched the camera again, feeling the broken glass under my fingertips. “I broke this when I was eleven. I dropped it, and I thought he’d hate me for it, so I ran into the woods and didn’t come back for hours.
He found me at dusk and told me it wasn’t the camera that mattered. It was the memory.”
Lois blinked fast. Her eyes were misting now, too.
“You’re that Jenna? Mike’s little girl?”
I nodded. My whole body was shaking.
“He said he’d heard your mother moved here after the divorce. To spite him, he said. He wanted to fight for custody.”
My voice came out thick and trembling.
“Mom told me he didn’t care about us anymore, that he had abandoned us to start a new life.”
Lois shook her head firmly. “He loved you until the last. His one regret was that he never got to make things right with you.”
I lifted the camera out of the bag with shaking hands and read the message again.
All those years of silence and wondering if he truly had moved on, and he’d been here all along, looking for me. Loving me. I looked up at Lois through blurred vision.
“Please, come inside. I’d like to hear more about him, if you don’t mind?”
She gave a small, trembling smile. “Of course not.”
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