-13

“Okay, now try the sentence.”
“La... tante ... du ... prince ... s'est ... matérializée...”
“Perfect.”
Regan laughed, with that infectious laugh Chris loved, and then hugged her mother tightly. The struggle over the sentence was worth it.
In the middle of the hug they heard a “click” and then a “rhuump.” They hardly had to look to know that director Burke Dennings had snuck up on them with his Polaroid camera.

A sly, frail man in his fifties, he spoke with a charmingly broad British accent so clipped and precise that it lofted even crudest obscenities to elegance, and when he drank, he seemed always on the verge of guffaw; seemed constantly struggling to retain his composure.
“Can I see, Mr. Dennings?” Regan asked, running to Burke.
“Why not?” the director replied, kneeling down as Regan reached him. They looked at the picture while the colors came up, Regan a toy doll beside Dennings’s tall frame.
“Look at your dress beginning to show,” Burke said. “Now look at your Mother’s arm.”
“Can you take another picture?” Regan asked.
“Certainly, my darling,” Burke answered.
“Goody.”
Chris got up and just gazed at Regan and Burke. Sure, it was a mundane thing, the two of them looking at a picture, but to her it was still a miracle. The sight of this man kneeling beside Regan, stroking her hair, putting his arm around her, would have been impossible a year before.