Part 21

     She hands the photo back to me, and I study it a little longer, drinking in every detail. Then I gently tuck it back into the folder, setting it inside the front, so it's on top of the rest of the photos. I flip through the rest of the pictures in the folder, which are of varying degrees of interest. There's another one of the Mason house – the same one, I think, that I saw in the book. This isn't actually much clearer than that one was (I'm going to guess that the first one I found hadn't come to light yet when the book was researched), but I set it on top of the pile anyway, to get a fresh copy made.
     “Got it!” Susan holds a folder aloft victoriously, then passes it over to me. “The photo of the daughter – I can't think of her name,”
     “Evelyn.”
     “That's right! Evelyn. The photo of her should be in there, but flip through the rest anyway, in case you spot more.” She turns back to her cabinets, starting a fresh dig in another drawer. “Have you seen any photos of the family before, would you recognize them? Everything in there should be labeled, but...”
     I grin inwardly, but repress the smile, and answer as calmly and prosaically as I can. “Yeah, I've seen a few reprinted photos and things, I'm pretty sure I'd recognize them. Especially if the pictures were taken on the grounds of the estate.” I open the folder, and find a slim portfolio inside. These photos have been carefully slid into plastic sleeves – which means I can flip through them a little more quickly, not having to worry about leaving fingerprints or making small tears on their delicate edges. So many somber faces! I know it was the style, and kind of a necessary thing, given that poses had to be held for several minutes for the photo to be taken, but still. Luckily, after the first few pages – mostly adults, I'm guessing prominent figures in local history, or maybe just the photographer's first customers? – the style of the images begins to change. There are scenic backdrops of stylized forests, and different kinds of props begin to appear. A young woman with a totally absurd hat looks into a birdcage, half a smile quirking the corner of her lips. (I'm assuming the bird was a fake one, since I doubt one could have been trained to sit still so long!) A young man – a really, strikingly handsome young man, actually. I pause a moment longer to study the image. I can't actually say I like the slicked-back oiled hair of that age, but, I have to admit it's classy looking. I'm awful at ages, but I'd guess he's in his late twenties or so. His suit seems to be extremely well tailored to him, accentuating his tall, slim form. There are white Grecian pillars in the background behind him (probably just a painted image, though it's hard to tell). He stands to the right of the frame, off-center, facing an elaborately tall bouquet in an ornate vase set on a low table with geometric details. He holds a rose in one hand – but, no, it's such an incredibly graceful gesture that to say he held the rose is no description of it at all. His fingers, surprisingly long, wrap elegantly around the stem of the flower, with one finger resting so gently against a lower petal. His face is turned toward the camera, with a look that... Oh, but his eyes! They're so arresting, even through the hundred years or so separating him from me. It feels like I've just stepped into the room, distracting him from his contemplation of the flower, and he's looked up in amused surprise.
     Those eyes. I know those eyes. They're the Mason eyes – just like Mr. Mason, and Meres, and---
     Meres. Is it him? I only saw him from a distance, that one time, but... I lift the portfolio up closer to my eyes, as though if I bring it close enough, the old photograph will whisper its name to me. Its name – Susan said most of these were labeled.
     “Susan? Is it---” I force a cough, and take a deep breath to steady my voice, which had sounded very shaky all of the sudden. My hands are shaking, too. “Sorry, must have been a bit of dust in my throat. Is it alright if I take a photo out of the sleeve? I just want a closer look.”
     “Oh, no problem,” she replies without lifting her head, flipping through a few folders. “I know you'll probably handle them more carefully than I do myself!”
     I force myself to take another deep breath, and will my hands to calm down. Why am I so nervous? It's only an old photo... however it might feel to me, he's not really looking back at me, it's an image taken over a century ago. Just a photo.
     I carefully slip the photo out of its sleeve. It's printed on a heavyweight paper, and in really good shape for being so old. While I could rattle off the names of old photographic print processes, I'm not familiar enough with them that I could identify them on sight. But the blacks in this are very black for that time, the whites a warm cream. It's a much higher contrast image than I usually see, with a clarity to the details that almost makes me shiver, it seems so surreal that something so clear could be so far in the past. Finally, I let myself look again at his face.
     Describing faces is always a tricky business, it's so hard to be specific, but, he really does have strong features. His cheekbones are sharply angled, but not in a ghoulish skull sort of way, like... kind of like Nefertiti, that's what it reminds me of. Strong, but delicate somehow, very refined. His hair isn't as short as the men in the photos around him, and it almost seems there's a bit of a wave to it, though it's hard to tell; it's so, so black, easily the darkest thing in the entire image. He seems so confident, so poised, such a strong, dominant male presence, and yet, there's so much grace and beauty in the details of his poise, that I'd expect to find in the pose of a young woman dancer.
     And his eyes... it's dangerous to look at them, because it's so hard to look away again. I know how magnetic they were in real life, but I'm still amazed at how much of that was able to be captured in a photograph – run through light waves, traveling through the air and the glass eye of the camera, engraved into silver nitrate on a glass plate, and printed onto paper... and all of that, a hundred years ago. And still, there seems so little distance between his gaze and mine. I remember what Anna said, about a strong male spirit hovering near me. And I wonder what color those eyes were...
     Finally, I break myself away, and carefully turn over the photograph, looking to see if it's been labeled – though now, I hardly need the verification. But there's nothing marked on the back, except a very faint pencil marking, “? 1870?” Turning the image over again, I realize there's a dark signature in the lower-right corner, and I see that it matches up to some of the other photos. Derick Reese's signature, I suppose.
     I let my gaze linger a few minutes longer, looking for any family resemblance in the features. There's nothing similar between him and Evelyn or Calvin, though I haven't had a very close look at Avery yet. And there's... it's hard to say, if he looks similar to his brother or not. There's nothing that stands out to me – they don't really have the same nose, or same set of features, or shape of the eyes. But there's no mistaking that sense of authority, of confidence without bound. And from both of them, I've felt a sense of a very old soul – for all their apparent youth (and Mr. Mason seemed to age far less than Cora did), even in this young image of Meres, there's a depth that belies his youth. I don't know if it's some great sorrow they experienced when young, or just a precocious awareness of the world around them, or even just the maturity that comes with truly knowing yourself. But there's something... something a shade beyond a normal personality, in both of them.
     Alright. I need to get through these, I could stare at that man forever. I set the photo carefully in the front of the folder – part of me wants to get an enlargement of the image, not just a copy, but I think he's dangerous enough on a small scale. I continue on through the portfolio, and while there are still the occasional somber faces in stiff poses, the images gradually get more and more artistic, almost like paintings rather than photographs. While most people at the time wanted a formal portrait done, representative images of what their family members' faces looked like, it seems Mr. Reese was able to convince some of them to let themselves be figures in his artwork. And I actually don't think he dressed them all up into different people than they were in real life – there are no little cherubs with bows and arrows, or women in Grecian robes and laurel wreaths. But he managed to capture the feeling of their personality, I think. At least, that's the impression I'm getting, looking at the images long after their subjects have passed out of this world.
     There! Evelyn! I grin broadly, seeing her friendly face. And oh, it really is a lovely image of her. I don't know how, with such long exposure times, he managed to capture a photo that looks so spontaneous and sweet. She's probably eight or so in this photo, and wears the most perfect little doll-like dress, full of ruffles and lace, with a bow about half the size of her little body tied at the back of her waist. It seems she was wearing a hat – but it's on the ground nearby, and her curls catch the sunlight beautifully, glistening as they spill around her face. She's standing on one of the benches built into the base of the big fountain in the garden, leaning slightly forward. Her fingers are stretched out, and are just able to brush against the stone form of a lily, which stands out a little ways from the main structure of the central sculpture. Water tumbles around the intricate forms of the fountain, and though it's a still image, again the mastery of the sculpture makes it seem as though I can see the water actually flowing over it. While the camera didn't have the response time necessary to catch any droplets in midair, the air closest to the fountain is lighter, almost glowing, presumably from the light reflected by a misty spray.
     Evelyn's face is bright, her lips slightly parted, and her eyes open wide, as she brushes her fingertips against the stone flower, with that wonderful childish blend of curiosity and delicate tenderness. Her face is so sweet, her expression so innocent... the contrast between this and the other photograph of a Mason is mind-boggling. And yet... yet there was something of that wonder, of that inherent ability to see incredible beauty in the world, that I think I see in Meres' gentle grasp of that rose. So maybe there's a family similarity after all.
     I jump in my seat, startled, and Susan laughs lightly, patting my shoulder. I hadn't heard her approach, and suddenly she was right in front of me.
     “Aren't Derick's photos something special? So different from most photos of the time. Not that there weren't artsy things going on in photography – there certainly were, but not in this town, out in the middle of nowhere. No other photo studio around here, before or since, has produced such lovely things.”
     I smile up at her, nodding. “I have to agree... these are so, so beautiful.”
     “There are reprints available of some of these – I think there may even be one of your Evelyn. I can run off whatever copies you'd like of course, but sometime before I started working here, someone was able to get really nice quality reproductions of some of these done up, and I know there are a few still floating around.”
     “That would be fantastic, thank you! Have you turned up anything else? ...not that I've even finished this folder yet,” I finish with a wry smile.