Chapter 7 - Diane’s Photograph
We returned to the restaurant that afternoon.
Not because Diane deserved an audience.
Because nobody could explain why she possessed a photograph of Boone.
She sat alone.
No red jacket this time.
No pearls.
Just a gray sweater and tired eyes.
Robert was not with her.
Arthur remained standing.
“Where did you get the photograph?”
Diane slid it across the table.
Boone.
Younger.
Standing beside a rural road.
The date matched the week after Samuel’s accident.
Thomas had come too.
He examined it.
“Where did this come from?”
Diane stared at her hands.
“My sister.”
Her sister, Carol, had been a volunteer with the county animal rescue years earlier.
She had helped transport Boone after Thomas’s clinic released him.
“She loved that dog,” Diane said.
“Then why did you behave like that?” I asked.
Diane’s eyes filled.
Because Carol had died the previous year.
And in her final months, illness changed her appearance dramatically.
Diane had stopped visiting.
“I told myself she wouldn’t know.”
Nobody spoke.
“She knew.”
Diane looked at Boone.
“When I saw his scars, I thought of her.”
Arthur’s expression remained guarded.
“That explains your reaction.”
Diane nodded.
“It doesn’t excuse it.”
“No.”
“I know.”
She pushed the photograph toward Arthur.
“Carol kept this for years.”
Arthur didn’t take it.
“You should keep it.”
Diane shook her head.
“No. I think it belongs with him.”
Arthur finally accepted it.
Diane stood.
“I’m sorry.”
Then she left.
Arthur watched her go.
“Do you forgive her?” I asked later.
He thought for a moment.
“I don’t know.”
That answer mattered.
Forgiveness did not have to happen on somebody else’s schedule.
But Diane’s photograph contained something none of us noticed until that evening.
In the background was a damaged road sign.
Behind it stood a man.
Thomas enlarged the photograph on his phone.
His expression changed.
“That’s the deputy who found Boone.”
“So?”
May you like
Thomas looked at Arthur.
“He told us he arrived alone.”
