The Photograph 2

POV: Avalon Pierce

Selene sat very still across the table.

“Diana,” she said.

“Diana,” he said.

“She didn’t mean for this to happen,” Selene said.

“No,” he said. “But it happened.”

“Someone in the prosecutor’s office sold information from a sealed federal file,” she said. “Information about our daughter.”

“Yes,” he said.

She looked at the table.

At her hands carrying the wedding ring he’d put on her finger because a dead woman’s will had decided they should be in the same room.

“I’m not angry at Diana,” she said. “I want to be. I’m just—tired. I’m tired of the edges of our lives being populated by people who mean well and cause damage anyway.”

“I know,” he said.

“The center holds,” she said. But it came out differently than it usually did. It's quieter, like she was checking rather than declaring.

He reached across the table.

“The center holds,” he said. 

She looked at him.

“Sandra Cole,” she said. “What do we do?”

“We don’t pay her,” he said. “We never pay her.”

“Then she releases whatever she has,” Selene said.

“Let her,” he said. “Everything she has is true. Elena existed and she was held. The hospital classification was imperfect. None of it is shameful or damages us.” He held her gaze. “She’s counting on us being afraid of our own story. We’re not.”

Selene looked at him for a long moment.

“Rachel,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“We go to Rachel first,” she said. “Before Sandra Cole can release anything. We tell the story ourselves again in our way.”

“Yes, again” he agreed.

She stood up, picked up her phone and dialed Rachel.

Rachel answered on the second ring.

“I need you,” Selene said. “Tonight.”

“I’m already in the car,” Rachel said.

He looked back.

“She was already in the car,” Selene said.

“She’s a good journalist,” he said.

“She’s been waiting for us to call,” Selene said.

“Probably since the theatre,” he said.

“Definitely since the theatre,” Selene agreed.

Rachel arrived at nine and everyone of them sat at their kitchen table.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “From the beginning. Sandra Cole, the medical records, the blackmail, Diana’s disclosure and the federal file. Everything.”

They told her.

It took forty minutes.

When they finished Rachel closed her notebook.

“I’m not writing the blackmail story,” she said.

They both looked at her.

“I’m writing the other story,” she said. “The breach of a sealed federal file. A private investigator hired by investors worried about civil liability. The systematic attempt to weaponize a dead infant’s medical records against the woman who built a foundation in her name.” She paused. “That’s not a foundation story. That’s a federal crime story and it’s bigger than anything Sandra Cole thought she was selling.”

Selene looked at Avalon.

He looked at Selene.

“Write it,” Selene said.

“I need one thing,” Rachel said.

“What,” Selene said.

“A statement from you,” Rachel said. “About Elena, the first but it has to be In your own words. I would also like for you to give me permission to include her in the piece.”

Selene was quiet for a moment.

She looked at Avalon.

He nodded once.

She looked at Rachel.

“Her name was Elena Rose Castellano,” Selene said. “She lived for four minutes and seventeen seconds, and I named my daughter after her because she deserved to be carried forward, not weaponized.” She paused. “You can print that exactly.”

Rachel wrote it down.

Word for word.

The piece ran at 6 AM the next morning and by 7AM it had been shared a thousand times. By 8AM the federal prosecutor’s office had issued a statement confirming an internal investigation into potential file breaches. By 9 AM Sandra Cole’s lawyer had called Margaret and by 10 AM  Margaret called them.

“She’s withdrawn the blackmail demand,” Margaret said. “ Her lawyer says she made a mistake in judgment and wishes to resolve this privately.”

“There’s nothing to resolve privately,” Avalon said. “She committed a federal crime.”

“I know,” Margaret said. “I told her lawyer the same thing.”

“Good,” he said.

He hung up.

Looked at Selene.

She was feeding Elena, looking at their daughter’s face with the specific expression she wore when she was feeling something too large to contain in any single emotion.

“It’s done,” he said.

“Is it?” she asked.

“The threat is gone,” he said. “Rachel’s piece made sure of that.”

“People will read about Elena,” she said. “The first one.”

“Yes,” he said. “They’ll read that she was real and she was held and her mother named her daughter after her.” He sat beside her. “That’s not damage, that's her being known.”

Selene looked at Elena.

“She deserved to be known,” Selene said quietly.

“Both of them do,” he said.

She leaned against him.

He put his arm around her.

Elena fed, oblivious to federal investigations and sealed files and the specific ongoing drama of being a Castellano Pierce, which had apparently started before she was a month old.

Her phone rang.

Dr Adeyemi.

Selene answered.

“I read the piece,” Dr  Adeyemi said. “I want you to know something.”

“Tell me,” Selene said.

“I gave no information to anyone,” she said. “I want to be absolutely clear about that. What I knew about Elena stayed with me. It will always stay with me.”

“I know,” Selene said. “I never doubted you.”

“Good,” Dr Adeyemi said. Then, quietly: “She was known from the beginning, Selene, by me and now by everyone who read that piece this morning.”

Selene closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. “For holding her.”

“It was an honor,” Dr Adeyemi said. “It always will be.”

She hung up.

Selene sat in the kitchen with her daughter and her husband and the morning light coming through the window and felt something settle that had been unsettled for a very long time.