Chapter 4

Matthew placed a framed photograph of Sophie on the mantel, blocking the picture of my mother and me at her kitchen table. He adjusted the frame until only one brown corner remained behind Sophie’s white skirt.

The reporter watched from the sofa while a camera pointed at the three of us. Sophie sat close to Matthew, her shoulders arranged in a soft curve. I stayed beside the mantel, one finger resting on the hidden frame.

“People saw the embroidery last night,” the reporter said. “They heard Sophie question Matthew about proof. What happened?”

Matthew gave me the calm look he used when he wanted obedience to seem like kindness. “Hannah can clear this up. Tell her Sophie created it.”

My finger slid beneath the rear frame. The wood caught against my mother’s picture, and I stopped before Matthew heard it scrape.

“No.”

Sophie pulled a loose thread from the sofa cushion and wound it around one finger. “You know how much work I put into my wedding.”

The reporter looked at me. “Are you saying Sophie lied?”

“I’m saying my mother spent her last month working beside me. Sophie took credit in front of four hundred people.”

Matthew reached for the photograph between us, then left his hand suspended above Sophie’s smiling face. “Hannah, your silence already looked spiteful. Saying this on camera will make it worse.”

“My silence kept your guests from watching me call you a liar.”

The reporter shifted her notes onto her knee. Matthew saw the written words and leaned toward her.

“Grief has confused Hannah about who created it,” he said. “Her mother was ill. Memories from that period are difficult for her.”

I lifted the rear frame free. My mother sat beneath the kitchen light with a pencil tucked behind her ear. I sat beside her, laughing at something outside the photograph. Matthew’s eyes stopped on her thin wrist and the cloth gathered across our laps.

He had taken that month from me once. Now he was trying to take my memory of it.

“Ask him why he hid this,” I said.

The reporter rose and brought the camera closer. “Matthew, why did you cover a photograph that supports Hannah’s account?”

Sophie unwound the thread so fast it cut a pale groove around her finger. Matthew stared at my mother’s face. His practiced answer did not come.

I turned the picture toward the camera. “Confusion doesn’t leave evidence.”

Matthew gripped the mantel clock and silenced its ticking with his palm. For the first time, he looked at the two women in that photograph as if he could see the life he had traded for applause.

I held on to the corner of my mother’s photograph still visible behind Sophie’s white skirt.