“Why?”
“Bad harvest one year. Someone decided it was the witches.”
“And they killed them?”
“Depends who you ask. I don’t doubt people died, but they say that the women knew the men were coming and hid. They just lost their houses.”
“Just,” I said, thinking about the fact that I was now living with my parents.
“On the plus side, if they really were witches, I bet they hexed them good after that.”
“And if they weren’t, they starved.”
“I told you it was a sad story. But you seemed interested in witches, so here are Hereford’s. And they do say these woods are haunted.”
“And what do you say?”
He grinned. “We used to come out here to drink in high school. On Halloween, even. And I never saw anything out of the ordinary.”
“Maybe the witches just like you.”
“Maybe. I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.”
“Probably smart. You don’t want two-hundred-year-old witch ghosts mad at you.”
“No.” He looked at his watch. “Do you want to walk back or Uber?”
I pursed my lips. “Funny.”
“I’m serious.”
“Oh, okay, let me just use my nonexistent cell service to get an Uber to pick us up in the middle of the woods. Do the witches get a discount?”
Joe pointed through the trees. “There’s a road about a quarter mile that way. And cell service another tenth of a mile up the hill once you’re out of the trees.”
“And we just walked—how far did we walk?”
“About three miles.”
“When we could have driven?”
“Where’s the adventure in that? Besides, it’s good for you. Builds character.”
I shook my head but passed him my phone. “If I had to hike all this way to an abandoned witch town, I need a picture. And now that I know you’re a photographer, I want something artsy for my Instagram feed.”
He handed my phone back, set his backpack on the ground, and pulled out a camera. “I work better with my own equipment. Come on, there’s a more complete foundation on the way to the road, and the light is better.”
Joe led the way, stopping to pick a few wildflowers. When we reached the foundation that had the recognizable remains of a real wall, he told me to sit, then posed me with the flowers, instructing me to put one leg up on the wall, then guided it to the exact angle he wanted with a gentle hand under my knee, before positioning my arms and turning my face to the side to shoot me in profile.
“Take your hair down,” he said, looking at me critically. I reached up and pulled it free from the ponytail holder. He ran his fingers through it, adjusting pieces. It felt oddly intimate, and I was suddenly shy. He stepped back and looked at me through the viewfinder but didn’t take the picture. “Relax your shoulders and tilt your head up toward the sun.” I did what he asked, and he looked again. I saw him shake his head from the corner of my eye, and he came over and sat on the wall by my foot. “Don’t be nervous.” I started to protest, but something in his demeanor stopped me. He was a professional, after all. “Tilt your head up and close your eyes.” I closed my eyes, leaning my head back. “Imagine the sun is washing away everything that’s bothering you. Anything you’re afraid of, it can’t touch you when the sun is on your face out here.”
I heard a dry leaf crunch under his foot as he stood, and I wondered for just a moment, with my eyes closed, my head tilted back, if he was going to kiss me.
Instead, I heard the snap of a shutter. “Perfect,” Joe breathed as he looked at the image on the camera’s screen. “Do you want to see it?”
I climbed down and went to him, where he offered me the camera. I was bathed in a beam of sunlight that created a circle around me where it came through the trees, and I looked ethereal, like a wood nymph in a serene yet sensual pose.
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get that”—I gestured toward the camera screen, then toward myself—“out of me.”
He smiled again. “That is you. I just capture what I see.”
I didn’t know what to say. That was what he saw when he looked at me? He put the lens cap on his camera and the strap around his neck. “Come on. The road isn’t far, and it’s lunchtime. I’ll transfer the shot to my phone after I call an Uber, and then you can put it on Instagram. Just tag me as the photographer.”