Page 53 of Capture the Moment
“Plus you’re going to wash the exterior and vacuum the interior.” Coop tossed a candy wrapper at him. “After you throw out all your trash.”
Frankie let out a heavy sigh.
“And then you’re going to clean up our room.”
“Boot camp,” Frankie muttered.
“Pardon me?”
“I said, ‘Suits me.’”
Coop nodded. “That’s what I thought you said.”
Maisie stood in front of the old, slightly tarnished mirror on top of the bureau, studying the picture on her smartphone and comparing it to her reflection in the mirror. On her smartphone was a zoomed-in, close-up photo she’d taken of Kate, when she was staring at a bird or moose or something out in the distance. The more time Maisie spent with the photographer, the more she decided that Kate was everything she wanted to be: smart, pretty, super focused. Everything her mom was not. Well, not the pretty and smart part but the focused part. Her mom could walk into a room and forget why she was there.
Maisie admired everything about Kate, with her effortless style and the way she seemed to forge ahead, turning heads. Mostly, Frankie’s. It swiveled to stare at Kate. The funny thing was that Maisie didn’t blame him. Kate wasthatpretty.
So she was on a mission to transform herself into Kate, helped by a visit to a pharmacy in Jackson yesterday when she tagged along on Pops’s errands. She spent an entire month’s allowance on makeup and hair products.
Hair came first. Kate’s brownish-red hair was thick, wavy, gathered high on the back of her head, cascading into a long swirly ponytail. Shiny, like it was spun from sunrays. Maisie’shair was wild and fuzzy red curls that refused to be tamed. She wrestled with the straightener she’d borrowed from her mom, tugging and pulling, but each curl seemed to fight back. Gobs of hair spray helped her tackle most of it into a ponytail, but it looked like a pom-pom stuck on the back of her head.
Studying Kate’s eye makeup in the photo, Maisie then applied a smoky gray liner on each eyelid. Her hand was a little shaky and the liner wasn’t quite straight in places. She squinted into the mirror.Bleh.She made a second pass over the liner, a little wider to cover her mistakes.Not too bad.
Next came black mascara. One coat, two coats, three coats. She smeared a thick layer of foundation over her cheeks to hide her freckles. Lots and lots of foundation.
Finally, a shiny pink lip gloss. A sigh escaped Maisie’s lips, her frustration mounting as she eyed her braces in the mirror. Kate had a perfect white smile, like in those toothpaste commercials.
Last came the outfit. Maisie had carefully chosen clothes that screamed “Kate”—she thought so, anyway. A simple top, jeans, and hiking boots.Perfect.Casual and cool. She turned this way and that, paced the small room, trying to catch that same ease Kate wore. She practiced Kate’s laugh, light and musical. Then she peered at herself again in the small mirror on top of the dresser.
She lookedawesome.
Maybe now Frankie would notice Maisie. He sure did notice Kate. Practically drooled.
Outside, a car horn tooted. Thirty seconds later, it tooted again. This time, a bit longer.
Pops!
He had told Maisie to be out in the jeep in ten minutes so he could get to the visitor center for a ranger meeting. She grabbed her smartphone off the bureau and checked the time.Uh-oh!That was twenty minutes ago.
Grabbing her backpack and her big, puffy, bright yellow down jacket, Maisie hurried outside, the door closing behind her with a soft click. When she hopped in the jeep, Pops said nothing about how late she’d made him. Not a word about her dazzling new appearance. By the time they arrived at the visitor center parking lot, he turned off the jeep, opened the door, and stepped out. Before he closed the door, he looked right at her with a thoughtful expression. “Sweetheart, a tulip doesn’t struggle to be different from a rose.”
Maisie shot him a side glance. What didthatmean?
Pops just didn’t seem like himself this summer. Absent-minded. Distracted. There were times when he’d stare off in the distance for long stretches or fail to hear the whistle of the tea kettle. She wondered if he might be starting to have dementia. He worried Maisie. After all, Pops was in his mid-fifties, not exactly a spring chicken. Maisie knew a lot about dementia from her friend at school, whose grandmother put cereal in the refrigerator and milk in the cupboard. Odd things like that.
A little concerned, Maisie zipped up her jacket and reached for her backpack. She would have to keep a close eye on Pops for any alarming or strange behavior. She blew out a puff of air. That meant she’d have to be worrying about both her grandfather and her mother. Different worries, but all worry felt the same.
Kate sat on the stone hearth in the Jenny Lake Lodge, her camera in hand, as a midday storm rumbled outside. The lodge hadn’t officially opened for the season yet, but they had opened the large living room for visitors to enjoy. She was waiting out the rain by scrolling through her most recent photographs on her camera’s screen and felt pretty encouraged by the improvements she’d made today. After studying her mistakes, she’d adjusted her camera settings for lighting and speed, and the results were much better compositions. In one,she’d captured a majestic male moose grazing in a meadow, its velvet antlers glistening in the soft light filtering through the trees. The detail was so clear, it was as if you were right there with him. Three birds stood on the back of the moose. In her mind popped a caption for this photograph: “Waiting for appetizers.”
The lodge’s large living room was bustling with people seeking shelter from the rain, creating a cozy atmosphere, full of humming conversations, though Kate was hardly aware of them. Then she sensed someone’s eyes on her and looked up to see Coop approaching.
“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.” He sat down next to her, a warm glint in his gray eyes. “Don’t tell me. You’ve scored a reservation for dinner at Jenny Lake Lodge tonight, with a table for two right against the windows.” He gave her a light jab with his elbow. “And you’re thinking of inviting me to join you.”
“I only wish,” Kate said, pleased he was here. She hadn’t seen him since Wednesday. “One meal here would swallow my entire budget for this trip.”
“Good thing they haven’t opened the restaurant yet. Frankie’s in the kitchen, hoping to sample their practice meals.”
She held up her camera. “Here’s why I’m smiling.” She explained how discouraged she’d been yesterday, so she studied her work, trying to identify mistakes and figure out how to correct them. She showed Coop the photographs she had taken today, then she pulled up similar photographs from a few days ago, illustrating the progress she had made.
