Snapshots of a Small-Town Life
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI. Also, Bridgewater and Greyston County are fictional locations and the original characters that inhabit them are also fictional. Any resemblance they may bear to actual places is purely coincidental (and please don't ask me what state they're in: I haven't the foggiest!).
Rating: K
Author's note: As promised, this fic is written as a sequel to Writing on a Blank Slate and Familiar Strangers. More a collection of short 'snapshots' strung together (hence the title) than a single continuous fic, it's an attempt to fill in some of the blanks in the story of Nick and Sara's life together. At the moment it's written from Sara's POV, but that may change, as it's still very much a work in progress. Please R&R!
Chapter 1
Sara Stokes carefully placed the box that she was carrying on the kitchen table. It had been a long time since she'd sorted through its contents but she was determined to prepare a photo album for Rose before she left for college at the end of the summer. And, while she was at it, she thought, she might as well start albums for the other children as well.
It was just before 10am on a bright summer's morning, and she had set aside a whole day for her task. Rose and JJ were both off at their summer jobs, and Abby was at a friend's house. Only Jenny was around, probably reading in the tree-house, knowing her. Of all their children, Jenny was the most like Sara, bookish and a little shy, and Sara smiled fondly at the thought of her youngest daughter.
She shook her head, amused at herself. The first photograph wasn't even out of the box, and she was already daydreaming. She folded back the flaps and reached for the first envelope.
Although most of the photos Sara had taken of her family over the years were stored in this box this was no haphazard arrangement. Sara always sorted through every set of prints as soon as she picked them up, placing a careful selection of the best shots in the photo albums that lined one whole shelf in the living-room, labeling the others, and then returning them to their envelope to be filed in date order in the photo box as neatly as any card-index system.
Friends teased her about not going digital, but Sara simply smiled and ignored their comments. Nick had a digital camera, but Nick wasn't the family photographer, and Sara knew that she could never explain to anyone exactly what the photographs meant to her.
Photography was, for her, a series of rituals: lining up her family for a formal shot, or randomly snapping a scene before the participants were aware of the camera; collecting the processed prints from the pharmacy; sorting through them and smiling again at the memories they evoked; and finally placing them in the box or the album, to form a chronicle of her family's life that could be explored time and again.
All this was something that she had never experienced until she had married Nick, and so her photographs were more than mere printed images. They were a tangible reminder of a lasting happiness that she had never dared hope that she would possess.
All of which was not something that could be easily explained to another person, and even the kids thought her obsession with family photos was, in their words, 'weird'. Only Nick seemed to understand, as he seemed to understand everything about her, even the things that were never said out loud.
And so it was that she was able to draw an envelope from near the front of her collection and know without a doubt that it would contain the photos from when she and Nick first arrived in Bridgewater.
She looked at the first photo and smiled.
"Oh yes. I remember this…"