Chapter 2

By the time I caught up with Lucy, my husband’s “family portrait”—the one without our daughter—was three minutes and forty-seven seconds from going live.

The studio group chat kept telling me to return to the control booth. Evan called twice.

I ignored both calls and drove Lucy home.

Less than ten minutes after we arrived, a notification announced that the campaign video was live.

The cover image was still the family portrait with Lucy missing.

Some comments praised the clean composition. Others asked why we hadn’t brought our daughter to the launch.

Lucy placed her phone facedown on the kitchen table.

“Now everyone will think I was never in it.”

I almost told her people online would forget soon enough.

Then I remembered how many times I had used the word soon over the years.

The photos hadn’t disappeared.

Lucy remembered every one.

Evan didn’t come home until after eleven. He loosened his tie, dropped his camera bag onto a chair, and said, “You walked out in front of everyone. The sponsors questioned me all night.”

“You cropped her out. Of course they had questions.”

“It was a commercial image.” He lowered his voice and glanced toward the stairs. “When Lucy was in sixth grade, that summer-camp photo received more than three hundred comments. Someone cropped her face and turned it into a meme. Have you forgotten?”

I hadn’t.

For weeks afterward, Lucy covered her birthmark with concealer before school and locked the bathroom door whenever she washed it off.

She had personally asked us not to publish the first three promotional photos. I had signed the forms marking them as private.

That part of Evan’s explanation was true.

It was also why I had defended him for so long.

Lucy came down the stairs carrying her tablet.

“I asked you to remove the first three,” she said. “Not the other nine.”

She set the tablet in the middle of the table.

Every original photo in the album was paired with the version released to the public.

The fourth was from a picnic the previous spring.

In the original, Lucy leaned against my shoulder.

In the published version, all that remained of her was one white sneaker beneath the bench.

She opened our family group chat from that day.

You can post the original. Don’t retouch my face, and don’t crop me out.

The next message was from me.

Let Dad handle it. He knows how to protect you.

My name sat above those words.

I had always believed I stood between them, softening the damage for both sides.

The screen showed me what I had actually done.

I had stood beside Evan and sent Lucy away to prove, alone, that her refusal deserved to count.

Evan reached for the tablet.

“These are studio files. They shouldn’t be stored on a personal device.”

Lucy pressed her hand over the screen. “That’s my face.”

“There are client workflows and unreleased materials in there too. Give me the album. I’ll sort everything properly.”

I watched her fingers tighten around the tablet.

Evan wasn’t entirely wrong about the confidential files.

Yet even now, he was more concerned about a possible leak than what he had done to his daughter.

He couldn’t bring himself to say, I see it.

I picked up the tablet, turned off the screen, and placed it inside my bag.

“I’ll keep the album for now. You can list the files that actually contain client information, and we’ll review them together.”

Evan stared at my bag.

“Claire, don’t turn a family argument into a business disaster.”

Lucy turned toward the stairs. Halfway up, she stopped.

“Tonight was only the screen version.”

She didn’t look at Evan. She spoke only to me.

“The print campaign has already shipped. Tomorrow morning, the whole city will see number twelve.”