Chapter 5
Chapter 5:
The trick with burning photographs, Lara discovered, was that they didn’t want to go quietly.
She’d expected something cinematic — a single match, a clean flame, ashes floating upward like released birds. What she got was stubborn photo paper that curled and blackened at the edges but refused to fully commit, the glossy coating producing a chemical smell that stung her eyes and a thin, acrid smoke that set off the kitchen extractor fan.
She burned them anyway. One by one. Standing over the metal trash can she’d dragged from the kitchen to the back patio, feeding photographs into the small fire like offerings to a god she no longer believed in.
The beach photo went first. Then the award ceremonies. Then the university trips, one after another, their edges browning and peeling back to reveal the white cardboard beneath before the flame consumed them entirely.
It was meditative, in a horrible way.
Each photo took about forty-five seconds to become unrecognizable, and in those forty-five seconds Lara watched twenty years of friendship reduced to carbon and heat and the faintly sweet smell of burning adhesive.
She was halfway through album number eight when Callum and Declan came home.
They arrived separately — Callum’s black sedan pulling into the drive a full three minutes before Declan’s Aston Martin roared up behind it — but they reached the patio at the same time, drawn by the smoke and the specific wrongness of a fire in a place where fires didn’t belong.
Callum saw the albums first. His stride broke — not a stumble, exactly, but a hitch in the machinery of a man who was engineered not to hesitate. He crossed the remaining distance in four steps and his voice, when it came, had a crack in it that Lara had only heard twice before: once when his father had been hospitalized, and once when she’d had an asthma attack at sixteen that had turned her lips blue.
“What are you doing p>
Lara didn’t look up from the trash can. The current photograph — the three of them at a rooftop bar in their early twenties, Declan’s arm slung over Callum’s shoulder, Lara holding a cocktail she’d been too young to legally order — was taking its time.
“Spring cleaning,” she said. “The photos were getting moldy. You know how the humidity gets p>
“Moldy.” Callum repeated the word as if testing it for structural integrity and finding none.
Declan arrived at the trash can and did what Declan always did: acted first, thought second. He lunged for the remaining stack in Lara’s hands, but she was ready for him. She opened her fingers and let the photographs drop — a waterfall of glossy paper, twenty or thirty images, cascading directly into the flames.
The fire swelled.
“No — p>
Declan’s hand went in after them.
For one reckless second his fingers were in the fire, reaching for a photo of something — a Christmas morning, a birthday, a Tuesday that had mattered — and then the heat registered and he yanked his hand back with a hiss, shaking it, the skin across his knuckles already reddening.
“Even if they were moldy,” he said, and his voice was raw in a way that had nothing to do with smoke, “there was no need to burn them. They’re memories, Lara. Memories p>
Callum stood very still beside the trash can. He wasn’t reaching in. He wasn’t shouting. He was watching the fire with an expression that Lara recognized from board meetings — the expression of a man calculating a loss that couldn’t be recovered.
Lara looked at them — at Declan’s burned fingers and Callum’s clenched jaw and the genuine anguish written across both their faces — and felt something bitter rise in her throat.
Here she was.
Alive. Present. Standing three feet away.
And over the past month they’d dismissed her, scolded her, sided against her, forgotten her asthma, and treated her like an inconvenience in her own home.
But a stack of old photographs? That warranted grief.
The irony was so sharp she almost laughed.
Almost. What came out instead was something quieter and worse — a small, closed-mouth smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“They’re just photos,” she said. “We can always take more p>
The tension in Callum’s shoulders eased a fraction.
Declan’s breathing slowed. They wanted to believe her, Lara realized. They needed to believe that this was a minor eccentricity — moldy photos, spring cleaning, nothing to worry about — because the alternative was a truth neither of them was ready to face.
“New photos would mean a trip,” Callum offered, testing the waters. “We haven’t traveled together in a while p>
Declan’s face brightened with the speed of a man who’d spotted an exit from an uncomfortable room. “We could bring Bridget! She’s always saying she’s never been anywhere p>
Of course.
Of course.
Lara watched the last photograph curl into ash — she couldn’t see what it had been, but the flame was blue at the edges, which meant the paper had been high-quality — and said nothing.
They took her silence for agreement, which was easier than the truth, and the relief that washed over their faces was so transparent it was almost endearing. Two brilliant men, world-class in their respective fields, utterly incapable of reading the woman they’d known since childhood.
They were heading inside, already discussing destinations, when Declan stopped in the doorway.
“What are those?” He was staring at the living room.
At the suitcases.
Four of them, standing in a neat row by the sofa like soldiers awaiting orders. They hadn’t been there this morning.
“Oh, those.” Lara wiped a smudge of ash from her thumb. “I resigned today. I’m switching jobs p>
The two men looked at the suitcases. Then at each other. Then at Lara.
“You resigned?” Callum’s voice was careful. “You loved that job p>
Lara shrugged — a gesture so deliberately casual it might as well have been a neon sign — and walked past them into the house. “People change p>
She left them standing in the doorway, two men surrounded by smoke and suitcases and the dawning, unnameable suspicion that something had shifted beneath their feet while they weren’t looking.