Chapter Three – “The Girl in the Photograph”

Vivienne Langford | First Person POV

I kept the photograph in the drawer by my bed, tucked beneath a folded handkerchief I hadn’t used since my mother’s funeral. I thought if I hid it close to something sacred, I wouldn’t lose control.

But the truth was, I never had control. Not since the fire. Maybe not before that either.

I stared at the girl in the picture for hours — not continuously, but in flashes. I’d catch her glance as I passed the drawer. I’d imagine what she had seen just outside the frame. I tried to place myself in her bones. The thin elbows. The too-small sketchpad. The red sweater with the unraveling sleeve. I didn’t remember sitting for the picture. But I remembered the house. The ruin of it. The rooms that held no sound after the heat had eaten through the wallpaper.

Someone had been watching.

That much was certain.

The photograph hadn’t been scanned or downloaded. It was developed — physically printed, aged, a soft bend at the corner, as if it had been kept and handled over time. The handwriting on the back — blocky, red ink, uneven spacing — was deliberate in its vagueness:

How much do you really remember?

The question hung in my mouth like smoke. I could almost taste it.

I returned to the museum the next morning, not because I needed to be there, but because I needed to be near something I understood. Grief, curated and backlit. Memory, frozen and hung on clean white walls. Pain, reframed as beauty.

The Langford Museum didn’t change after Edward died. That was the strangest part. His portrait still hung in the main gallery. His voice still echoed from the prerecorded welcome message in the vestibule. His smile still lit up the pamphlets like a second sun.

The dead have a way of staying where they’re not wanted.

Room 17 remained closed to the public. I had locked it personally. But that day, I brought the key.

I walked the perimeter slowly. No one followed. No one asked questions. I was still the widow, still sacred in my silence. That made me untouchable. People protect what they pity.

The lights flickered on.

Inside, the air felt tight. Not dusty — we kept everything pristine — but weighted. Like the exhibits themselves were breathing.

I sat on the marble bench in the center of the room. The sculpture of the falling man stared back at me with blank iron eyes. I opened my bag. Pulled out the photograph.

Set it on my lap.

She looked even younger under the gallery light. Softer. I wondered who had taken it. Who had been close enough to see me like that. Who had watched from behind the camera, waiting for the moment I stopped drawing.

That’s when I noticed it.

The corner of the photograph — faint, but there — a shadow. Not a person. A shape. Angular. Almost architectural.

I held the photo up to the light.

A pillar.

Stone.

And behind it, a carving.

Barely visible. Almost gone with time.

But I recognized it.

It belonged to the Garden Museum in Braxton.

A small town two hours west of the city. Obscure. Unremarkable. I had only been there once — years ago — for an exhibit on postwar mourning rituals. It was housed in a converted cathedral. The pillars had carvings of birds and women and vines. I remembered touching one. I remembered thinking it felt like skin.

I folded the photograph and slipped it back into my bag.

The drive took less time than I expected.

The roads were clear. I didn’t listen to music. I kept the windows up. I rehearsed questions in my head but didn’t plan to ask them. I only wanted to look. To be sure.

The Garden Museum was quiet when I arrived.

A woman in her sixties manned the reception. She didn’t recognize me, which was a relief. I wandered the halls with my coat still on. The museum smelled like stone and beeswax. The light was different here — softer, older.

And there, in the south wing, was the pillar.

Same shadowed corner. Same carving — a bird in flight, wings curled downward. A figure behind it. Not quite a woman. Not quite an angel.

I stood there for a long time.

Until I heard it.

The scrape of paper.

I turned.

Just a boy.

Sixteen, maybe. Tall. Pale. Art student, probably.

He looked at me, then at the pillar.

“I think she was here,” he said softly.

I blinked. “Who?”

He hesitated. Then shrugged. “The girl from the photo.”

I froze.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a flyer — student exhibit. Free sketching workshop. Nothing special.

But beneath it, something else.

A second photo.

Of me.

Same red sweater. Same pillar.

Same blank stare.

But this time, the figure behind me was clearer. Taller. Blurred by motion.

Not a statue.

Not the boy.

Someone else.

Watching.