Page 69 of Delilah Green Doesn't Care

“But you will,” Claire said, holding her water glass between two hands.

“When?” Ruby said, her posture going straight.

Claire laughed. “Someday.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst.”

“I love you too,” Claire said, eyes shining at her daughter.

“Oh my god,” Iris said, eyes bugging out on her phone. “You have two hundred thousand followers?”

“And that’s our cue,” Delilah said, then waved her own phone at Ruby. “What do you say?”

“Okay, yeah,” Ruby said, grabbing her notebook and leading the way through the living room toward the back porch.

“Holy shit,” Delilah heard Iris say behind her. “Claire, look at this.”

Anxiety spiked in her chest, and she hurried out the door. She wasn’t sure if that was a goodholy shitor a bad one, but either way, she didn’t want to hear what Claire had to say about her photos at all.

Outside, the air was cool and damp, the sun just starting to sink, creating a twilight-lavender glow that was perfect for a certain type of photo. Delilah and Ruby went into the backyard, the grass a little long and the flower beds a little weedy, but there was a hammock strung between two maple trees, a strand of colored lights hung along the porch railing that could’ve been left over from Christmas or could’ve been a regular fixture. Either way, the yard was charming. Imperfect. It was lived-in and homey, the kind of backyard Delilah remembered from her and her father’s house in Seattle, but which she’d never had at Wisteria House.

“Okay,” she said to Ruby, once she’d taken a deep breath to calm her stomach. “Look around. See if anything catches your eye.”

Ruby frowned at her. “Like what?”

“Anything. Photography isn’t so different from drawing. When you go to do a sketch, you either see something interesting you want to draw, or you think of something interesting in your mind, right?”

Ruby nodded.

“Same thing with photographs. You see something and you want to capture it in a new way, a way only you can see it, and then show that to the world.”

Ruby’s frown deepened, but it was more a look of curiosity and thought than confusion. She glanced around her yard, then started walking through the grass slowly, her notebook still tucked against her chest. Delilah let her roam, watching the girl search through her tiny world.

“This,” Ruby said, stopping at a stone birdbath in the corner of the yard. It was dingy, full of stagnated water and dead leaves, but right in the center a single white flower floated. Delilah couldn’t tell what flower it was, some sort of weed probably, but the effect of a little life hovering above death... well, it was striking.

“Perfect,” Delilah said, smiling at Ruby, then handed the girl her phone, already open to the camera app. “Let’s see what you got.”

Ruby took it and set her notebook in the grass, her expression uncertain, but after a few minutes of staring and head tilting, she got to work. It took a while. The girl was meticulous, careful, experimenting and then shaking her head softly when what she saw in the photo didn’t match what she wanted in her head. Finally, she looked up and handed the phone back to Delilah.

Scrolling through her images, Delilah smiled. “These are good. I like your point of view here.” She held out the phone so Ruby could see the birdbath’s edge, the viewer nearly eye level with the dirty water, the flower the only thing in focus.

“Can you show me how to edit them?” Ruby asked.

Delilah glanced up at the house and saw Claire standing on the back porch, forearms resting on the deck railing like maybe she’d been there for a while.

Iris was nowhere to be seen.

“I should probably go,” Delilah said, her stomach-moths taking flight again.

“What about on the camping trip?” Ruby asked.

Delilah frowned. She hadn’t even thought about going on the trip. When Iris had saidwe’ll all go, Delilah didn’t take her literally. Plus, there wasn’t another wedding event until next Wednesday, which meant Delilah had a blissful five days ahead of her without a single Parker or Parker-Green lavishing her with their disappointment. She was of half a mind to fly back to New York for the duration, except there was no way she could afford the round-trip ticket.

“Oh, sweetie, I don’t think I’m going on that.”

Ruby’s face fell. “What? You have to!”

“I just think—”