Page 37 of Rough Hands, Soft Lips
Owen ran to the bathroom to change. “I love birthdays!” he said before closing the door behind him. April’s friends grinned at her, clearly loving this as much as she was. When Owen emerged again, he stood in the middle of the room and spun in place.
“They look super cool,” Nathan said, handing the kid the compliment he was clearly anticipating.
“Thanks,” Owen said.
“I agree,” April added. “I’d even go so far as to say they lookstupendous.” She winked hard at the kid, who required several winks in succession to figure out what she was getting at.
“Oh!” Owen ran to the coffee table to get the package meant for his father. He picked it up with far more caution than a typical five-year-old has and carried it to Cal. When he handed it over, he quietly said, “We made this for you.”
Cal took the package and turned to April, questioning her with his eyes.
She nodded to him. “It’s for you. Owen and I put it together for you, and we thought today would be the perfect time to give it to you.”
Carefully, Cal opened the package. He seemed like one of those people who reused wrapping paper whenever he could. But there were deep feelings there, too. This was something made for him by his son, and he was going to handle it with the utmost care. When he pulled the lid off the box, April could have sworn she saw his eyes well up. But the tears were gone as soon as she noticed them. “This is…” He knit his brow as he stared down at the portrait in his lap. “I don’t know what to say.”
The picture was of Owen standing on one of the swings, holding on tight, and looking up as though he were seeing something amazing. There was a sense of awe about him, a sense of the wonder of childhood. He hadn’t known April was photographing him at the time, though she’d asked his permission ahead of time. He was watching the storm roll in. April had developed the picture in black and white, hand-tinted a few details, and framed it in a rustic, wooden frame she felt would look right at home in Cal’s cabin in the woods.
“You made this for me?” he asked as though he couldn’t really believe it.
“Yeah,” April said. “That day I took Owen around town. We got lots more pictures, but that one was the standout shot. I can give the others to you later.”
“It’s perfect,” he said, still staring down at the portrait. “He looks so happy.”
“That’s because heishappy,” she assured him. “I see a lot of kids at my job. Owen has been one of the most well-adjusted,confident, happy kids I’ve met. You’re a fantastic father, you know. Anyway, I think so.”
Cal stood and crossed the room. He didn’t even have to say anything. He spread his arms, and April automatically stood up into them and accepted his hug. He was warm and comfortable, and she felt right at home in his arms. “Thank you,” he said. Then he turned to Owen and offered him a big, warm hug, too. “And thank you. It’s the best gift I’ve ever received.”
CHAPTER 17
CAL
Cal spent several days periodically trying to think of a gift that had moved him more than April’s portrait of his son, and he couldn’t. It meant the world to him, not only to have a professional-looking portrait of Owen, but to see the boy the way someone else saw him. Loving one’s own child was a given to Cal. He knew he had an image of Owen that was skewed and biased in the best way. But because of that, he would rarely get the kind of glimpse that came from outside.
The portrait April created showed a boy who was calm, curious, and delighted by what he saw around him. Cal would never have been able to see that, precisely as seen through anyone else’s eyes, without April’s watchful camera. He wanted to see all the pictures she had taken that day, almost as much as he wanted to see her again. For that reason, it didn’t surprise him at all when he impulsively called her one afternoon.
She was at work but on lunch, so she answered, and he got straight to the point. “Can I see the rest of the pictures you took?” He told himself to come up with a decent reason that didn’t make him look like an overbearing father. “I thought itmight be nice to have some companion pieces. Like a series, you know?”
“Of course,” she said without hesitation. “Where would you like to meet, or do you want to come straight to my place?”
“I’ll buy you coffee, if that’s OK.”
“It’s more than OK,” she said, and he could hear that she was smiling.
They set up a time, and Cal counted the hours until he would see her again.
Once they were settled at a table in the café, April laid out a spread of black-and-white photographs across the table. “These are my favorites. Let me know which ones you like.”
They were all beautiful photographs. In some, Owen was sitting on the swings, going down the slide, playing in the sandbox. In many, he was looking directly at the camera with a huge smile that let Cal know the boy really did have an amazing time that day. He wasn’t just saying so for April’s sake. Cal chose three photos and tried to narrow them down.
“I think three’s a good number, don’t you?” he said.
April agreed. “You can take all three of them and mull it over tonight, if you like. You don’t have to decide right away. Take them all if you want to keep them. I can always print more. Let me know which ones you want framed, and I’ll create special prints that will match the one you already have.”
“This is really sweet of you,” Cal said.
“Nah. I like doing nice things for my man.” She grinned at him. “Speaking of which, I brought some of your photos today, too, in case you’d like to frame any of them.”
“My photos?” For a second, he thought she had taken some sneaky shots of him, but then he recalled their recent “hunting” trip. “Oh, my photos!” he said, suddenly excited. “Did you develop them then? Did any of them turn out well?”
