Page 71 of The Best Shot

A long, low farmhouse with white paint gone soft with age and a porch running the full width. It sat in the land like it had grown there, tree line hugging it close after decades of quiet agreement.

Hale put the truck in park. “This is home.”

I looked at it. Then a little longer at the way the light fell, roofline catching just enough, the rest dropping off into shadow. In my head, the shot was perfect, though I knew the camera would never catch it exactly right.

I reached for my camera bag anyway.

He brought me in through the back, through a screen door that creaked long and slow, into a mudroom with boots lined along the wall and a raincoat hanging from a peg.

The kitchen opened off the mudroom, and beyond that, a hallway.

The ceilings stretched high above us, the wide-plank floors worn down to a color you couldn’t buy, the plaster walls holding sound in a way cheap drywall never could.

I trailed my fingers along the hallway wall, feeling the cool texture under my palm.

“It needs work,” Hale said.

It had honest wear from being lived in hard for a long time, patches and fixes made for function. But underneath it all…

“The bones are good.”

“Yeah.” There was pride in his voice. “I’ve got enough now to start fixing it up.”

“But not too much.”

“No.” He smiled. “Not too much.”

I moved deeper down the hall and slowed.

Photographs.

The frames filled every stretch of wall, slightly crooked, spacing uneven, black-and-white prints older than either of us, bleeding into faded color from the seventies and eighties and nineties.

I stopped in front of a portrait of a man standing outside a younger version of this house, squinting into the sun. He had Hale’s jaw and Hale’s way of standing, like impressing people would never be on the agenda.

“Your dad?”

“Yeah.” Hale stepped beside me. “Him and my Mom. Their wedding portrait’s over the fireplace, but this one’s my favorite.”

The next one was older, formal, tinged amber with time.

“Grandparents,” he said. “On my dad’s side. The house was theirs before.”

“And before that?”

“His parents built it.”

I lingered, hyper-aware of him watching me study his people.

I didn’t have photographs like this. I had my own work on my walls. Images from places I’d passed through, proof I’d been places. Not this.

“You have other family?” I asked, moving before he could read my face too closely.

“Uncle and aunt on the east coast. Some cousins. We don’t see each other much.”

I nodded.

The hallway opened into a room that couldn’t decide if it was an office or storage. Boxes against one wall, toolbox on a desk with papers stacked mid-sort. And books.