Everybody in the Picture

The photographer asked Vincent to relax his shoulders.

He tried.

"Perhaps a little more," she said.

Beside him, Elena made a quiet sound.

"You're laughing at me."

"I would never."

Lily, sitting between them on the sofa, lifted the rabbit toward the camera.

"He's doing it properly."

"He has fewer business concerns," Vincent said.

"He's a rabbit."

"That explains it."

The photographer lowered her camera while they laughed, then lifted it again so quickly he almost missed the click.

It was the picture Elena chose.

His collar was crooked. Lily had one sock slipping down her heel. Elena was looking at him instead of the camera, her hand caught in his sleeve.

Nothing about it looked arranged.

They hung it in the sitting room at Lily's height.

"So I don't have to get a chair," she explained.

The old portrait remained in the gallery. Its frame had been repaired, though the restored rose was a shade brighter than the others. The papers it had concealed were no longer in the house.

Sometimes Vincent stopped before it. He could remember the woman who had sat for it without losing sight of the woman calling him from the next room.

The recorder stayed in a drawer. They did not need to hear it again.

On Christmas Eve, the kitchen smelled of butter and orange peel. Elena stood at the counter rolling dough, her sleeves pushed up, a streak of flour beside her mouth.

Vincent touched it with his thumb.

She caught his wrist and kissed the flour from his skin.

"You're distracting the staff," she said.

"I was told this was a family activity."

"Then do some work."

She handed him a star-shaped cutter.

Lily watched his first attempt.

"You pressed too hard."

"The dough isn't injured."

"It stuck to the table."

He looked down. She was right.

Margaret arrived with a tin of cookies and politely declined to comment on his contribution. Marco brought a box too large to disguise beneath his coat.

"It's a book," he told Lily.

She walked around it once.

"That's a very big book."

"Illustrated."

She looked at Vincent for confirmation.

"You can open it after dinner," he said.

Marco's dollhouse spent the meal beside the tree beneath its paper wrapping. Lily checked it often enough that Elena finally turned her chair toward it.

Vincent looked around the table: Margaret passing potatoes, Marco listening to an account of school politics with professional seriousness, Elena reaching beneath Lily's chair to retrieve a dropped napkin.

There had been difficult nights between the last Christmas and this one. There would be more. Elena still disliked unexpected visitors. Vincent still sometimes answered a question as though it were a challenge. Lily still asked twice when someone promised to come back.

But her coat no longer waited beside the bed.

After dinner, the dollhouse was revealed to general approval. Lily inspected every room.

"The mommy goes here," she said, placing a small wooden figure in the kitchen.

"Why does she get the kitchen?" Elena asked.

Lily considered that and moved the figure to the sofa.

"She's resting."

"Excellent."

The daddy figure went beside her. Then the little girl. Then a rabbit borrowed from another toy set, much too large for the scale.

Vincent recognized the problem.

"He's hard to fit."

Lily grinned.

Later, when Margaret and Marco had left, Elena went upstairs to run Lily's bath. Vincent carried the empty cups toward the kitchen and found one missing.

He followed a soft scraping sound into his office.

Two pink slippers protruded from beneath the desk.

For a second, the past returned with such force that he stopped in the doorway.

Then Lily giggled.

He put the cups down.

"Who's under my desk?"

The slippers disappeared.

"Nobody."

"Interesting. Nobody appears to have stolen my chair cushion."

"It's a bed. Bunny's tired."

Vincent crouched. Lily had arranged the cushion against the panel, with a folded scarf for a blanket. An empty cookie plate rested beside her knee.

"Are you hiding?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"It's our house. You can visit."

He looked at the narrow opening.

"I'm not sure I can get in."

"You have to turn sideways."

With some difficulty, he lowered himself to the carpet. His shoulder struck the underside of the desk.

Lily patted his arm.

"Careful, Daddy."

He settled with his legs sticking out and his back bent at an undignified angle. She tucked the scarf around the rabbit, then leaned against him.

Elena found them there a few minutes later.

"I thought I heard someone hit his head."

"The doorway is poorly designed," Vincent said.

She knelt beside them, smiling.

Lily reached out and caught her sleeve.

"You can come too."

"There isn't much room."

"Daddy can move."

Vincent shifted his legs. Elena sat on the carpet outside the desk, close enough for Lily to rest her feet in her lap.

For a while, nobody spoke. Downstairs, the tree lights reflected in the dark windows. Somewhere in the kitchen, the dishwasher finished its cycle.

Lily's head grew heavier against his arm.

"Is it bath time?" she murmured.

"In a minute," Elena said.

Vincent looked across their daughter at his wife.

She reached for his hand.

He took it, carefully, so he wouldn't wake the little girl who had brought him home.

THE END