Chapter One: The Ninth Photograph

Their metadata listed the capture time as 5:17 the following morning. The camera's clock was correct. Every other photograph bore the right time. Lin stared at the date until the color left her face. At 5:17, she said, she would be at Northbank Hospital while her mother underwent dialysis. “What's near the hospital?” “The old passenger bridge. You can see it from her window.” Beneath the words in the ninth frame was an arc they had mistaken for shadow. Shen enlarged the image and raised the exposure. It was the outline of a rusted bridge arch. He had started in news photography and knew that a photograph was often most truthful at its edges, where the photographer had not meant to include anything.