Captured Moments

CHAPTER 1: THE MEETING

The morning Marie Dubois first met Landon Pearce, time seemed to stop in the village square of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The local clock tower had just chimed eight, and Marie was rushing across the cobblestones, her arms full of fresh bread for her father's bookshop cafe. Her dark curls had escaped their pins in the morning breeze, and her worn leather satchel bumped against her hip, full of the morning's newspaper deliveries.

Landon stood beneath the ancient plane trees, adjusting his camera lens. He'd arrived from England just yesterday, his mother's stories of her French homeland drawing him to Provence like a moth to flame. At eighteen, he was all sharp angles and artistic dreams, his camera an extension of himself.

The collision was inevitable. Marie, distracted by a group of children chasing a runaway chicken, didn't see him step backward. Landon, focused on capturing the morning light on the church spire, never heard her approaching footsteps.

Bread rolls scattered across the cobblestones. Marie's satchel spilled open, newspapers fanning out like startled birds. Landon's precious camera swung wildly on its strap.

"Mon Dieu!" Marie exclaimed, dropping to her knees to gather the bread. "Je suis désolée!"

"No, no, I'm the one who's sorry," Landon replied in careful, textbook French. "I wasn't looking where—"

Their hands touched over the last bread roll. Marie looked up, and for the first time, their eyes met. Hers were the color of honey in sunlight, flecked with gold. His were ever-changing grey, like storm clouds threatening rain.

Time resumed with a jolt when the village baker shouted from his shop: "Mademoiselle Dubois! Your father's waiting for his delivery!"

Marie scrambled to her feet, clutching the salvaged bread. "You're English?"

"Half," Landon admitted, helping her gather the newspapers. "My mother's French. I'm here to work for the local newspaper."

"Le Provençal?" Marie's eyes lit up. "I deliver their papers every morning to the café."

"Then I suppose we'll be seeing more of each other," Landon said, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Perhaps," Marie replied, already backing away. "If you learn to watch where you're stepping."

She turned and hurried across the square, but not before Landon raised his camera and captured his first photograph of her: sunlight in her hair, bread in her arms, and a smile she couldn't quite hide.

In the weeks that followed their collision in the square, Marie found herself watching the café door each morning, her heart quickening at the sound of the bell. Landon would arrive precisely at ten, his camera bag worn and leather-scented, his collar often slightly askew in a way that made her fingers itch to straighten it. Her father, noting the young photographer's daily appearances with shrewd eyes, had offered him use of the café's back room as a darkroom – "For the newspaper's benefit, of course," he'd said with a knowing smile that made Marie blush into the coffee cups she was arranging.

The back room became their sanctuary. Marie's father had once used it for storing his rarer books, and the shelves still held volumes of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, their spines cracked with age. The heavy velvet curtains, when drawn, created the perfect darkness for developing photographs, and the stone walls kept the summer heat at bay. It was here that Marie's education in photography began, though neither she nor Landon could say exactly when their lessons became something more.

"The key is patience," Landon explained one afternoon, standing behind her as she lowered a blank paper into the developing tray. His breath stirred the loose curls at her neck, and she forced herself to focus on the chemical-filled basin before her. "Watch now – the image appears like a ghost at first."