Farah hauled the last of all the cameras down the garage steps to the driveway. She arranged them in a circle in the gravel where she could make a plan for each. Two at the front gates, two facing the podium, one looking down from the second floor, and the smallest camera would stay with her as she roamed. Farah wanted to catch everything from every angle today. The press conference would begin in a few hours.
It was early, and all the Brights were still inside drinking coffee. Farah could see them talking excitedly through the window. A woman from a local salon was applying foundation to Patty’s face while another woman painted highlights into her hair. Spencer was reading something aloud to them from his laptop. They were more animated than they’d been in several days, almost happy. The press conference was keeping everyone busy and purposeful.
Even Philip was inside now. He’d agreed to abandon his post at the oak tree and get cleaned up for the press conference. Farah imagined him standing under a running showerhead as ribbons of dirt and sweat ran down his long body toward the drain.
They hadn’t discussed the previous day’s kiss, and Farah was trying to keep it out of her mind for now. There would be time for that later. Maybe, hopefully, there would be another kiss. But today, she needed to do her job and ignore the nagging feeling that her job was at odds with Philip’s well-being.
Farah wanted to be done with the work. She had the sinking awareness that the footage she’d been gathering in those weeks would come together nicely into a tidy story arc. It had hubris, suspense, revelations and destruction. Wayne would love it. Farah salved her moral anxiety by convincing herself that she could keep Philip out of the final product as much as possible, to make it about John Senior and Patty alone. She vowed to protect the innocent in postproduction. The alternative was quitting the project, and that was just too professionally dangerous.
Farah picked up two medium-sized handheld cameras and two mounting clamps. She put one under each arm, threw the clamps into a backpack and set out down the driveway. She walked along the gravel, through the lush wooded drive and down toward the road. When she got to the gate, she mounted the cameras to trees on either side of the entrance. The plan was to get footage of incoming cars as they arrived. Farah could mount a camera to anything: the face of a mountain, the back of a goat. She had bungee cords of every size in the trunk of her car and an affinity for the challenge.
As she adjusted the position of the second camera on the fat part of a branch above her head, a Mercedes passed slowly, the driver craning his head. Farah waved, but the man accelerated again and kept going. Gawkers. Local people didn’t want to be too obvious about it, but they’d been snooping in their own way—canoeing too close to the Bright beach and flashing cameras outside the gate. It was all pretty gross.
Farah had to remind herself that she was not the same as those people. She didn’t need to feel bad about doing her job. The Brights were the ones who’d called a press conference. They wanted to be watched—excepting Philip, of course.
Do not think of Philip. Not today. Today—just work.
Farah walked back up the driveway under the canopy of evergreens and maples. The humidity had broken, and there was a welcome breeze. She pulled her hair off her neck and let it cool her, realizing as she did that she was going to miss all this when it was over. Somehow, despite being a person who craved the dynamism and energy of a city, she had grown to appreciate the quiet woods. She wouldn’t miss the staged perfection of the little downtown or the uninspired whiteness of it all. But she’d miss the swaying trees and the way the air coming off the lake was always five degrees cooler than everything else. She’d come back here someday, maybe.
As she came around the bend at the top of the driveway, Farah found Spencer, JJ and Charlie locked in a hushed discussion. They stopped talking and looked at her with forced smiles, waiting for her to pass. They were talking so close their shoulders were almost touching, shaking their heads and wiping sweat from their temples as they did. Something was going awry.
Farah carried the rest of the cameras into the house and set them down along a wall in the kitchen. She poured herself coffee and made small talk with Ian, who was reading the newspaper.
“When does the press start arriving?” She already knew the answer to this, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Ian looked up. “They will start setting up in about an hour, I think. Charlie’s manning the gate.”
“And is everything still on track?”
Patty breezed into the kitchen at that moment in a form-fitting pale yellow shift. “Everything is great, Farah. I trust you’ll be outside with the rest of the camera crews?”
“Uh, yes, of course.” She nodded at Patty. This was her reminder that she was more help than family. “I’m almost finished setting up.”
Ian smiled apologetically and went back to his paper.
Farah took her coffee out the back door and sat on the deck stairs. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her email. There were a dozen messages from Wayne already—suggestions for which cameras to set up where, early footage she should be getting and maybe doing some confessional-style sit-downs with the family members in the aftermath.
She just needed five minutes to drink coffee. Then she’d get to it all.
Behind her, a screen door slammed, and Philip emerged looking fresh and clean. He smiled and sat down beside her. “Hi!”
“Hi.” The cheerfulness of this greeting unnerved Farah, who’d been hoping for something more intimate, less general. “How does it feel to rejoin civilization?”
He shrugged. “Not so different. Showers sure are nice, though.”
“That’s true.” Was this intimacy or was it generality?
They sat for a moment in silence, alone.
Finally, Farah said, “So that thing that happened yesterday...”
It was his sentence to finish. “Right. That thing...”
“We don’t have to say anything about it if you prefer not to. There’s a lot going on right now.”
“No, no, we probably should...” He was speaking slowly and from a distance. He cleared his throat. “Farah, I... I have a lot to think about now... You’ve made me think about things...which is good...but not necessarily easy...”
She waited.
“What I’m saying is that I’m not quite sure what to say just yet...”
It was excruciating and Farah wanted it to end. Whatever he was trying to say, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t I want you. It wasn’t This changes everything. She couldn’t watch him bumble his way through it any longer.
“Philip, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget it.” She wanted to sound breezy, but her voice was high and pinched.
“No, I don’t want to forget about it. I just don’t know what to do about it. Not yet, anyway.”
Farah snatched up her coffee mug, sending a wave of warm liquid over her wrist. “You don’t have to do anything! Let’s just move on, okay? I think that’s the right call.”
She walked quickly back inside, dropping her mug in the sink and heading toward the door. Ian tried to say something to her as she left, but she didn’t give him time to finish. She went past the guys still huddled together in the driveway and up the garage stairs to her room.
Fuck this. Fuck these people. And fuck these feelings. This was exactly what she didn’t want to do today. How could she have been so foolish as to think that Philip was available to her? What kind of self-loathing lunatic falls for an aspiring priest?
Farah unlocked her door and fell face-first onto her bed. She cried as she hadn’t in a long time—deep, wet sobs. They were the sobs of a foolish woman who makes terrible, embarrassing choices. The sound of Philip’s tortured, stilted explanation was still ringing in her ears. She was gutted.
When Farah was drained of everything, she lay still on the bed, facedown, for a long time. She could have fallen asleep.
Instead, she stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her face. She applied mascara and changed into a new shirt. And then she went back downstairs to do her job. Her job was to watch these monsters as they blew themselves up. She was just there to record it.