30

Assistant to the photographer was a mind-numbing job, but watching Natalia work was utterly engrossing. To Clay’s surprise, the ceremony took place outdoors on a farm. The bride and groom escaped in a horse-drawn buggy to have their pictures shot around the red pole barn. A little after 9:00, dinner and dessert had been served—buffet style, plenty left by the time the vendors (himself included) got in line—and the tiki torches around the white reception tent were lit. The DJ powered out one R&B hit after another that sounded exactly the same and clashed painfully with the down-home country surroundings.

Clay, Natalia, and several octogenarians seemed to be the only ones not dancing. Clay sat at a deserted table strewn with flower petals, crumbs, and white cake plates that honestly did look like china. The geriatrics conversed several feet away in a huddle of cigar smoke.

Natalia had resumed taking pictures after wolfing down a plate of food. She might well have forgotten Clay was here the way she had re-submerged into work mode, artist mode. During the exchange of vows, she’d crouched in the center aisle, just behind the front row of white folding chairs, and angled her camera upward. She crept all around the silk-flowered arch and tilted her camera every which way, yet she never intruded. From an out-of-the-way corner, probably only Clay noticed her at all, though noticed was a feeble word for what he was feeling.

Dressed in a short-sleeved, black Oxford shirt and slim black jeans, her hair pulled back but loosened by the evening breeze, Natalia outshone the twenty-something bride without trying. Her lips pursed when she set up a new shot. A beam of success lit her eyes when she captured what she’d seen through her viewfinder or in her head. Clay could have stepped out from his corner, marched down the aisle, and demonstrated for the new couple exactly how to kiss one’s bride. Now, hours and good food and fake conversation later, his final task was to guard Nat’s camera case. He lounged back in a plastic folding chair and battled the desire to drag her onto the portable dance floor.

A minute later, she lowered her camera to the at-ease position, level with her waist, elbows bent. White holiday lights fringed the inside of the tent, and colored lights rotated on the dance floor, constantly shifting the hue of the yellow bridesmaid dresses. As if someone had complained about the monotonous bass, “The Loco-Motion” started to play, and every dancer over fifty burst into applause. Natalia hovered at the edge of the celebration, face unlit. She lifted her camera, took a shot, lowered it again. Slipped around the edge where grass met floor and probably didn’t realize she now faced Clay head-on. How could he have been married to her for nineteen years without seeing firsthand how her art absorbed her?

She raised her camera again but brought it down to waist-level too fast. Oh, must have seen him. Maybe she would approach him. No one would notice, at this point, if she did.

Nope. She took another few shots, sidling away from him. It was okay, it really was, or it would have been, if today had been any other day. If he knew that, had she not been on the job, Natalia would have danced with him to Grand Funk. At some point, though, he’d lost the answers to fundamental questions.

Someone’s five-foot great-grandmother shuffled over to his table and plopped herself down. Her arthritic hands curled in her lap. “You here alone?”

“Photographer’s assistant.”

She laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Never seen a wedding quite like this in all my born days. Horse and buggy, mostaccioli in warming pans, and the wedding party wearing yellow of all colors. Maybe those cops around back are the fashion police, eh?”

Fun. He got to entertain the delusional relative of strangers. “I’m sure that’s what they are.”

“That’d be why their uniforms are gray instead of blue. See, gray is a neutral color. Good color for fashion police.”

Run! Clay shoved back his chair, breathed in and rocked back on his heels.

“And, see, that way they can judge anyone no matter what color she’s wearing, unless she’s wearing gray, of course. That might get a little sticky …”

The woman really didn’t know who they were. Clay walked away, and she kept talking. Where was Natalia, why couldn’t he find Natalia? He had turned both of their phones off. There was no one they needed to hear from other than Marcus, who wasn’t likely to call now, since he couldn’t have anything to say other than “Sorry about that broken promise to keep your daughter safe.”

His body buzzed, senses tuned in. The evening breeze tingled the hair of his arms. Dance music pulsed in his ears. The scent of American gourmet had begun to dissipate: baked chicken, roasted potatoes, green beans, mostaccioli. He spotted Natalia and could breathe again. She knelt in a corner of the tent, lining up a low-angle shot of the dance floor.

He strode past her to the back of the tent. Not that it really had a back, but one end had been designated for the caterers, and they’d parked their trucks on the other side of the tent flap. He ducked outside, into the wavering light of tiki torches and a spotlight aimed in this direction from the barn. Guys in white shirts and black ties milled around, packaging food, loading their trucks.

Off to one side, out of the caterers’ way, stood two stocky men in gray uniforms and utility belts. Badges, nightsticks, radios, sidearms. Clay backed away one step, then two. The one nearest him looked up and met his eyes.

“If you’re thinking we must be here without an invite …” The agent shrugged. Smiled.

In the stark shadows, swallowing nerves might be more obvious. For all Clay knew, his Adam’s apple was all they could see. And if it was, then … They don’t know me.

“Ending the honeymoon before it gets started?” His own voice sounded tinny.

“No, no. Would you believe it, here for the photographer.”

“Oh, I think she’s gone.”

“They do blend in.” The second agent scratched the side of his stubbly jaw. “GPS on the cell phone says she’s still here.”

Come on, Nat! Did she expect Khloe to call from inside re-education? Don’t look away. Calm down. “Must be a very important person.”

“We can’t discuss that, obviously.”

“Right, of course. But if you crashed a wedding for her …”

“It’s just routine questioning. Needed an opportunity to talk to her alone.”

Without Clay. Free to spill the burdens that anyone trained to read people would see in her every breath, her every blink. Her husband was a Christian, and her daughter was wrongly accused. They’d known everything. All this time. Maybe they tacked on some clichéd assumptions, too, like Clay as an abusive husband who threatened her to keep her quiet.

Lord, if You’re not going to make things right, then I am.

The prayer, the rant, the pushing back at a God who didn’t bother to pull for him—it hung in the night and drifted away like torch smoke. But not before both agents zeroed in on something, maybe a flicker in his eyes, a twitch in his cheek, maybe just a breath that drew itself in deeper than the last one. They hadn’t recognized his face, not yet, but they knew him. The almost fugitive. The man about to lose.

One of them stepped closer. “Clay Hansen?”