The light was going fast. I had maybe 15 minutes before the porch would be too dark for the lens I had. So, I sat still in the driver's seat with the window cracked and the engine off and watched the cabin through the tree line. My elbow was braced on the door. The camera sat in my lap.
I'd been there 40 minutes already. The cabin was a nice one for what it was. One story, wood sided, a porch that ran the full front face of it. A light over the door and another inside behind a curtain that threw a yellow rectangle onto the boards. I could hear the lake somewhere behind it, but couldn't see it from where I was parked.
Off the access road, half onto the dirt shoulder with the truck nosed into the brush. A white SUV sat in the gravel lot beside the cabin. I'd been looking at it long enough that I knew the plate by memory. I'd been out to this access road once before, 2 weeks earlier, just to learn the layout. That time I hadn't gotten out of the truck.
I just sat and looked at it in daylight and drove back home. This time I waited. I wasn't angry. That probably sounds wrong, but it's the truth. At that point, standing still had become the whole job.
You go angry and you say something before you have what you need and then they apologize and get more careful and you end up with nothing but a fight and a spouse who now knows to cover their tracks. I'd watched enough people blow their own cases by moving too fast. I wasn't going to do that. The door opened. I put the camera up.
They came out together. Holly first, then him behind her and she turned back to say something and he was grinning at whatever it was. She was in a gray zip-up I'd bought her two Christmases ago. He had his hand on the small of her back. They stopped at the porch railing and she leaned into him and he said something close to her ear and she laughed and then she turned her face up, and he kissed her.
It wasn't a peck. It wasn't ambiguous. It was a long, comfortable kiss. The kind you don't do with someone you're still performing for. They'd been doing this long enough to be easy about it.
I took the shot, then three more. I lowered the camera and checked the screen. Clean. Sharp enough. Her face was fully visible.
His profile was clear. You could read it one way and one way only. I sat there another minute while they went back inside. I wasn't shaking. My hands were steady.