I didn't mean to take the picture.
Not really.
I was testing the light,midday sun, crisp shadows, the kind of clarity you only get for a few minutes each day. I lifted my camera out of habit, more muscle memory than intention.
That's when I saw her.
She was sitting on a bench near the fountain. Her legs crossed. A breeze teased her hair. But it was her hands that caught me,cupped around a silver locket she held open in her lap, her gaze fixed on whatever was inside.
She wasn't posing. She wasn't aware of anything beyond that locket. And her face....God, her face....carried a kind of ache I recognized but couldn't name.
Click.
One frame. One stolen second. And just like that, I had something I hadn't been looking for.
I didn't know her name.
I didn't know whose picture she was holding.
I didn't know the story folded inside that locket, or how close it sat to her heart.
All I knew was that I'd captured something rare.
And I needed to know who she was.