The Woman He Kept on the Shelf

I've photographed every Coal Hollow Iron run, wedding, and funeral for ten years. I was the club's memory. Everyone assumed that made me Stone Mercer's girl, and for a while I assumed it too. Then he stood up at the Christmas table and announced he was marrying a hairdresser from the county seat, and I kept taking pictures until my hands shook too hard to hold the camera. I left Coal Hollow two weeks later and gave the city of Pittsburgh my name instead of a patch. Eighteen months after that, Stone sober, Stone abandoned, Stone two hundred miles from home, stands outside my apartment and tells me he was a coward. He's right. He can stand there. He can wait. I've got a job, a lease, and a shoebox of photographs he doesn't know I've seen. He's going to have to earn the frame.