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with a bemused grin. It had pained Natalie at first, or so she said, but even she had to admit that, as a PR strategy, it worked. But now Oscar was reaching a critical point. An opening date for the show hadn’t been confirmed yet and if they waited too long, Natalie had warned, people would lose interest.
    Lina steadied her breath. “I’m not upset,” she said, smiling as Oscar’s eyes played across her face. “The pictures are fantastic. I’m so glad you finally want to talk about Mom.” She did not want to lie to him, but she didn’t know how to explain the thudding in her chest. “It’s just … been a long day. I’ll take a closer look tomorrow, but I’m glad you’re painting her.”
    Oscar’s shoulders relaxed, the muscles of his jaw gave way to a wide, relieved smile. He let out a whoop and swooped in to hug her. “Hallelujah. Okay then. I’m ready. I’ll call Natalie tomorrow.
    “And listen—” He pushed her out of the hug, hands on her shoulders. “I mean it, I want us to talk more about your mother.”
    “Sure. We’ll talk more.”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “I’m pretty busy at work.”
    “Okay, the next day. Whenever you can.”
    Lina nodded. “Good night, Dad.”
    “Good night, Carolina.” She leaned forward to accept his kiss, the scratchy brush of his beard against her cheek, and then she turned and moved toward the door of the studio. Her vision was focused to a fine, narrow point. A wedge of darkness loomed behind the half-cracked door, the glass knob smudged with half a thumbprint of blue paint. Lina reached out and pulled it open. Duke rushed past her, a blur of orange and white, and bounded up the stairs, his tail twitching.
    Lina started up to her bedroom, past a series of photographs that hung above the steps. There were eight in total, taken on Lina’s birthday from ages four to eleven. In each one she was standing in the same position, her arms at her sides, the camera aimed straight-on, her torso filling the frame. On her head perched a series of homemade birthday hats: ribbons and bows, a large plastic 8, peacock feathers, balloons.
    Lina knew the photos by heart: smiling in years five and seven; serious in nine, ten, and eleven; crying in four; eyes closed and mouth open in eight. Every year it had been Oscar baking her birthday cake, inviting her friends, making her hat, positioning her against the wall, the same spot, the same anticipation, every year when she was a child. Every year, her father on the other side of the lens, clicking the shutter open and closed, freezing the moment in time.

Josephine
    J osephine stepped through the back door into the kitchen and placed the basket, half full with berries, on the table. She felt Mister’s slap still in the bones of her face, echoing down her spine, but she saw no mark when she checked in the glass above the washstand. She fixed herself with a stare: her eyes of shifting color, a shadow of blue here, green there, hazel and brown and gray, the colors fractured together and split. “Tonight,” she whispered. The kitchen seemed larger with the word alive in the air, the stone floor pushing downward, the roof lifting toward the open sky.
    She climbed the steps to Missus’ room and clapped her hands before the closed bedroom door. “Missus Lu,” Josephine called. “Got to get you up and dressed. Dr. Vickers coming today, coming from town.”
    For months Mister hadn’t wanted to fetch a doctor. “He’ll just rob us blind,” Mister had said last October, after the first fit came, Missus Lu stiff and crooked on her bedroom floor. Josephine had never seen such a thing before. Papa Bo’s trances at the pulpit had never gripped him with such demon force. Lottie sometimes fell to the floor with her praying, but her body stayed natural in its shape.
    Mister said to Josephine, “Your Missus just having a bad spell. We’ll wait on it.”
    But the spells went on and on, through the short days of winter, frost on the grass, and