Short Story: The Photo

by Marlene Adelstein

The rental casita that Jesse had found on-line turned out to be perfect. It was furnished, took dogs, and was only a short walk to the old town square. She had put most of her belongings in storage back home in western Mass., loaded up the truck with her essentials which included St. Anthony, of course, and they did the cross-country ride, the dog’s head hanging out the window, ear’s flapping back in the wind.

Now that she’d been in Taos for five months, she felt settled in. A calm finally descended allowing her to breathe and let the intensity of the search for Sophie finally dissipate. She’d met some nice people, no real friends yet, but hoped that would happen. She supposed she still carried a protective shell and certainly didn’t tell anyone her story, that she was the mother of a kidnapped young daughter. That the tragedy had hijacked her life for years. No, no one needed to know all that. But this dramatic change of scenery felt like a needed respite for both her soul and her artwork. The New Mexico light everyone talked about truly was spectacular inspiring new paintings.

After her daily fix at Coffee Apothecary, she headed to an antique shop she’d been eyeing. She wandered in and out of the shop’s stalls, her hands grazing objects: old lamps, a marble-topped bureau, a wrought iron doorstop shaped like a Scottish terrier. Things with age, rust or a patina spoke to her and she often included bits in her mixed media pieces. She was waiting for that spark of excitement, that tingly, inexplainable feeling an item evoked.

Jesse turned a corner and came to a small booth with mid-century furniture and a collection of rolling pins. But then her eye snagged on a set of colorful ceramic mixing bowls. One was filled with old photos. $1.00 each, was handwritten on a little sign. Bingo! This was up her alley. The bowl was overflowing with both black and white and more recent color ones. Maybe they were found at an estate sale. Maybe someone died and the remnants of their life ended up here, tossed haphazardly into this bowl. That would be sad. For Jesse, photos like these always conjured stories and stories conjured ideas for her art. She flipped through some black and white ones from what looked like the 1960’s: a family standing in front of a large gas guzzling sedan, an elegant mother with a fur coat holding the hand of a young girl, a father and son holding fishing rods.

Her fingers picked through more of the bowl’s contents. Another photo caught her eye. An attractive young couple probably in their 20’s, leaning against the side of a building — rustic with grey weathered shingles. Empty wooden lobster traps were stacked on the ground. A sign above the front door read Libbie’s Lobster Pot. Something about it made her linger over it.

She gazed at the girl and the young man. So carefree, the man’s arm draped around the girl’s shoulder. This young woman looked totally smitten with the guy. He had a head of thick, messy hair in need of a cut, and a slightly cock-eyed grin. He looked self-assured and sexy. They  seemed deliriously happy. She turned it over and saw hand-written on the back in blue ballpoint ink: me and Jack, 1995.

Jesse brought the picture closer to her eyes and studied it. She blinked a few times then

inhaled sharply as if socked in the gut. There was no mistaking it. The young woman’s face, her smile, the parka and hat she wore, the girl in the picture was a young Jesse! Or someone who was her spitting image. An identical twin. Or her perfect double. A doppelganger.

“What the hell?”

She didn’t know the location, who the guy, Jack, was, or how this photo of herself from

twenty some years ago, if it was her, landed in a bowl with a batch of unidentified photos in Taos, New Mexico, so far from her home. Her heart raced as she carried the picture-filled bowl she planned to purchase up front to the cashier’s counter.

A chill ran through her. Was Sophie trying to get her attention once again? Was someone playing a terrible prank on her? Or was it something more bizarre and sinister?