The empty place

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

The photographer arranged the family before the painted backdrop: the father on a chair, the mother beside him, and their daughter standing between them. A smaller chair remained near the edge of the room. The girl kept glancing at it.

“We may as well move it,” said the photographer. “It will crowd the picture.”

Her mother touched the chair’s worn arm. “Her brother always sat there.”

The girl looked towards the window, where a pale square of sunlight lay across the floor. “He hated sitting still,” she said. “He would have been turning round by now.” Her father smiled, but it faded before he could answer.

The photographer began to shift the smaller chair. The girl stepped forward and asked him to leave it. She did not explain further. Instead she straightened its cushion, then returned to her place beside her parents.

The photographer covered his head with the dark cloth and looked through the lens. In the glass, the empty chair seemed larger than it had in the room. He lowered the cloth, brought another chair from against the wall and seated the girl between her parents. The brother’s smaller chair remained empty at the edge of the group. The photographer moved the family a little closer together. The father put one hand on the back of his daughter’s chair; the mother rested hers on the empty one.

“Ready,” the photographer said.

The girl did not smile. She looked at the place where her brother would have been, then turned her face towards the camera. The shutter clicked. Afterwards, as the family stood to leave, she was the last to move. She ran her fingers once along the empty chair’s worn arm, and followed the others out.