stunt_muppet

Marisol found the photograph tucked away behind another picture frame, just out of sight.

 

She’d arrived at Horatio’s house not ten minutes ago, ready to drive them both to dinner; he had invited her inside for a moment while he headed upstairs to get his jacket. And since she’d never seen the inside of his house before, Marisol proceeded to do what any houseguest would do: poke around his living room.

 

His home was clean and functional, and showed very little sign of anybody living in it. There were no books laid out on the coffee table, no rings from where a mug had been set down. The TV screen was coated in a fine layer of dust. In the cabinet beneath it, a set of DVDs were stacked neatly; Marisol didn’t check, but she was willing to bet they were alphabetized.

 

There were no pictures on the wall, no artwork, no wallpaper, no decoration of any kind. But there were two framed photographs on top of the TV cabinet.

 

The older of the two photographs showed a family of four, posed stiffly in formal attire, wearing strained smiles. A family portrait, obviously, taken on a bad day; she could almost hear the mother’s weary voice as she placed a hand on both her sons’ shoulders and told them to be still, dammit, and pretend you like each other.

 

One of the boys had a familiar head of bright red hair.

 

The second photograph was as formal as the first, but the smiles on these people were warm and sincere. A bride in white lace and a groom in a tuxedo held hands in the center of the frame; the groom was the other son from the family portrait, but the bride was a woman she’d never before seen, with dark eyes and dark curly hair.

 

The wedding party surrounded the bride and groom. Horatio, in a tuxedo exactly like his brother’s, stood to his left, one hand on his shoulder. By the looks of it, everyone else – groomsmen, bridesmaids, even the ringbearer – was the family of the bride.  

 

It was behind the wedding photograph that she’d found the third picture.

 

After the two formal portraits, this picture struck her by how casual it was. The curly-haired woman – the bride – was in the center again, this time wearing a business suit and a bright orange blouse. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open; the photographer, whoever they were, had caught her in the middle of a laugh. She held one arm unsuccessfully in front of her face, trying to shield herself from the camera’s lens.

 

And Marisol couldn’t help but notice that she was even more beautiful here – smiling, laughing, caught off-guard – than she was in her bridal white.

 

Horatio chose that precise moment to come back downstairs, pulling on his jacket and asking “You ready to go?”

 

“Who is she?” Marisol turned to face him, holding up the photograph. Horatio stopped with one arm halfway through his sleeve.

 

Without answering, he closed the distance between them and looked closer at the picture. “I’d forgotten about this,” he said quietly.

 

Somewhat belatedly, Marisol remembered that he may not have wanted to share that with her. She backtracked. “I’m sorry, I just – I found this lying out, and I – ”

 

“Her name’s Yelina Salas,” he continued, calm but ignoring her protests. “She was my brother’s wife.” The hesitation between the first and second words was minute but unmistakable.

 

“She’s pretty,” There was something about his answer that troubled her – a sadness, an unease. “Did you take this picture?”

 

“No. My brother did.” He didn’t look her in the eye. “Just a few years before he died, actually.”

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, but he was still looking at the picture, even more distracted than before.

 

When Ray died – supposedly died, he was still unused to that idea – Yelina asked him if he wanted anything of his, anything to remember him by. Horatio wasn’t much for sentimentalism; he had little use for souvenirs that lost their meaning in a matter of years. But he’d taken a look through, just in case.

 

Ray didn’t often take pictures, and when he did he usually forgot to develop them, so there was only a single shoebox half-filled with disorganized snapshots to look through. Nothing caught his eye; nothing triggered any particularly fond memories.

 

Except for that photo at the bottom of the box.

 

He was there when Ray took that picture; Ray had just bought a new camera, and hadn’t been able to resist the urge to play with it. He’d snapped pictures of Ray Jr, of his brother, of his house and front lawn, and – just that once, near the end of the evening – of his wife.

 

She’d resisted, of course, insisting that she looked terrible and was in no fit state to have her picture taken. Ray had ignored her; Horatio cheered him on, laughing at Yelina’s flustered embarrassment until she threw a rolled-up napkin at Ray to make him stop.

 

Ray got just one good picture in, and even in that she’d turned away, laughed, tried to hide her face.

 

She laughed, self-conscious yet somehow careless as the serious face she wore to work day in and day out fell away. Horatio felt as though he was spying on them, watching them alone. Watching how she acted around the man she loved, the man she chose to live her life and raise a family with.

 

And he wanted nothing more than for her eyes to turn to him when they opened.     

 

He should have left that picture behind, another memory he didn’t need. But he’d kept it, because it nursed the old anger, the old resentment for everything Raymond Caine was. It was an echo of every thought he’d blocked out when he learned of Ray’s death: I’m not sorry. I don’t miss him. I’m glad he’s gone.

 

It was so much easier to hate than grieve.

 

“Horatio?” Marisol asked, trying to look at him straight. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah,” he said quietly, replacing the picture. “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

 

“You don’t look fine.” She replied. She stood still, made no move toward the door. That simple picture shouldn’t have bothered him so much.

 

“It’s nothing, Marisol.”

 

“Well, obviously it’s not ‘nothing’.” When he didn’t make a move to face her, she walked toward him. “What’s bothering you?”

 

He still didn’t answer, and now her curiosity had subsided, replaced by irritation. “Why do you do this?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Why do you…not tell me anything?” she said. “I mean, you never say what’s on your mind. You always tell me ‘it’s nothing’ when I ask, or ‘it’s not important’, or ‘I don’t want you to worry about that’, or –”

 

“Because I don’t.”

 

“But I do, Horatio. Do you think I don’t care? That saying something like that’s just going to make me forget about it? It doesn’t. It...” she laughed humorlessly, trying to think of the right words. “…it just makes me worried because now I don’t know what’s going on.”

 

She sat down, clasped her hands, and looked at the floor. “I’ve told you things I’d never dream of telling anybody else, Horatio. I’ve shared everything with you. Is it so much to ask that you occasionally do the same?”

 

He hesitated. Actually, in this case, it was a lot to ask, but that didn’t seem like an answer she wanted to hear. How was she going to react when he told her about Yelina, about why he kept a picture of another man’s wife in his home? Because Yelina boarded a flight to Brazil a year ago, but she still wasn’t gone from his life – she kept turning up when he wasn’t looking.

 

And then there was the matter of Ray, because to understand about Yelina and the photograph Marisol had to know about Ray – something about Ray, anyway; probably not the whole story. Even part of the story would take more explaining than he really wanted to do.

 

But he had to admit she was right. She’d opened her door and invited him in without any hesitation; she deserved the same from him. Besides (and here he thought again of Yelina), lying never got him anywhere anyway.

 

He sat down beside her and started to explain as best he could.

 

“Not too long after he took this picture, my brother and I got into an argument. I don’t remember how it started, but it ended with us both saying things we shouldn’t have. And…we didn’t see much of each other after that.” Here comes the hard part. “One of the things I said to him was that he didn’t deserve Yelina. Or his family.”

 

Marisol winced. “Ouch. What made you say that?”

 

He smiled weakly. “My brother made a lot of mistakes. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve his family. I was just angry at him.”

 

Marisol still wasn’t sure where this was going. What did a fight with his brother have to do with the picture? And that still didn’t explain what upset him so much about it. Or why Yelina was the first thing he mentioned –

 

And then she thought of something – an unlikely something, but it would explain the nerves and the evasiveness. “Were you in love with her?”

 

He looked at the floor, eyes shut, that smile still frozen on his face. “Yes,” he said quietly, after a long while. “Yes, I was.” He met her eyes again, looking suddenly worried. “Marisol, I never –”

 

“No, I know.” And she wasn’t quite sure why she knew it, but she did.

 

“I think Raymond – my brother – I think he thought I had. But it doesn’t matter.” Back to staring at the floor. “After he died, Yelina asked me if there was anything of his I wanted. And that’s when I found that picture. And…I think I kept it at the time because it made it easy to stay angry at him.”

 

“Hard to be sad when you’re angry,” she commented.

 

“Exactly.” He seemed to have relaxed a little; not much, though. “So...you asked what was wrong and that was it.” He looked back at her. “I’m not proud of what I said to him. Or of why I still have that photo. And I had managed to put that out of my mind until just now.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Not your fault.”

 

And a tremendously uncomfortable silence set in, which Marisol finally broke before it crushed her. “Do you want to get going?”

 

“Sure.”

 

She stood up, but hovered at his side for a moment. “Thank you,” she said, “for being honest with me.”

 

She turned around, and took a few steps toward the front door before she felt his hand on her wrist. When she faced him again he kissed her on the forehead, and she wasn’t sure exactly what that was supposed to mean, but when she looked at him again she thought she saw a trace of fear buried somewhere under the usual worry.

 

They drove off without speaking, because Marisol wasn’t sure what to say to him; everything else seemed petty after what he’d just told her. Yes, she’d wanted to know more about him. Yes, it had frustrated her how little of himself he shared with her. And yes, she was glad he had told her the truth. But there was this whole other presence in his life that she hadn’t known about, and that other person wasn’t gone – they weren’t gone, rather, because just outside the frame of that photograph his brother was waiting. His brother was waiting and Yelina was watching, as real as if they were standing in his home.

 

She was just the guest, the interloper, the passerby not privy to their lives.