Chapter Three: No-Light Alley

A “photograph you have never taken” cost three hundred yuan at Chen Mo's camera shop. It came in an unopened box of black-and-white photographic paper that had expired twenty-seven years ago. Chen said the paper remembered the possibility of light but had never seen the world. In certain places, that made it a kind of passport. Chen was over sixty and ran Linchuan's last traditional photo lab. When Shen's father was alive, he had often come here to play chess. Chen listened to the story of Tang Li's disappearance without surprise. He locked the shop and removed every mirror from the display window. “Your father waited twenty-five years for that photograph,” he said. “Do you know the woman in it?”