Free Only Ever You by Rebecca Drake Page A

head. She’d never fully appreciated that moment and all the hundreds of other small moments in her daughter’s life.
    “You can’t undo it, Bea.” Frank had come home without her hearing him. He stood beside her on the patio, a solid presence impossible to ignore.
    For a moment she thought her husband was talking about the past, but then she saw that he’d dropped a Polaroid of the child that she’d taken that day at the park. “Give that to me; what are you doing with it?” She snatched it from the ground before he could retrieve it and pushed past him back into the house. He followed her inside, hovering as she hung up the set of keys she’d had copied. She hadn’t used them today, but she would soon enough.
    “It’s never going to work,” he said, not for the first time. “You need to let it go.”
    He’d always been negative; she felt the acid burn of long simmering anger. “Mind your own business, Frank!” She refused to look at him. If she didn’t look at him, with any luck he’d get the message and disappear.

 
    chapter nine
    OCTOBER 2013—TWO WEEKS
    Jill had just finished taking engagement photographs for a couple at Frick Park when David called. It was late afternoon and she balanced her cell phone between ear and shoulder as she loaded camera cases, tripods, and other equipment into the trunk of her car. He sounded rushed as he always did at work. “Are we all set for tonight?”
    “Tonight?” Jill pulled out the album she had to deliver and slammed the trunk shut. “What’s happening tonight?”
    “The firm dinner, remember? Andrew is going to be there and most of the other partners.”
    “Aargh, no, I completely forgot!” Jill slid behind the wheel and placed the album on the passenger seat. “Let’s just skip it, okay?”
    “I can’t do that.” David sounded aghast. “C’mon, I have to go and all the other spouses will be coming—what would they think if you didn’t show?”
    “I doubt anyone would notice. Besides, I haven’t even lined up a sitter—how on earth will we find someone this late?”
    “Call my mother.” He said it so quickly that she wondered if he’d planned it all along. “She’d be happy to watch Sophia.”
    “I don’t want to do that, David.”
    “Why?”
    “You know why. She feeds Sophia junk and she won’t follow her schedule—”
    “So what? She’s a three-year-old for God’s sake. How terrible is it for her schedule to be disrupted one evening?”
    “—and she finds a million and one ways to criticize my parenting.”
    “C’mon, she’s not that bad.”
    “Really? So she didn’t tell me last month that I was to blame for Sophia’s ear infection because I didn’t make her wear a hat?”
    “You’re too sensitive, Jill. Just ignore what she says, that’s what I do.”
    “Easy for you to say, you’re not the one she criticizes.”
    “She loves Sophia.”
    “No one’s doubting that.”
    “Then call her.”
    Jill groaned and David said, “Fine, don’t call her. But I need you tonight so we’ve got to find a sitter.”
    Jill glanced at her watch. “I won’t even have time to get ready at this point. I’m on my way to a client’s now to drop off some photos—”
    “Can’t you drop them off tomorrow?”
    “I promised them today.”
    “Then have someone else do it.”
    “It’s too late, I’ve already left the studio.”
    “So just call and cancel. They’ll understand.”
    “I can’t do that, not with these people.”
    “This is for one of those families, isn’t it?” David groaned when Jill didn’t say anything. “It’s like you keep tearing at a scab,” he said. “Why do that to yourself?”
    “Because I know how they feel,” Jill said, struggling to explain to him for the umpteenth time what she could barely explain to herself. “I need to do it. It helps them. It helps to have someone who understands. It helps me.”
    There was silence on the other end of the phone, but she could hear his