The darkroom smelled of vinegar and secrets. Mara sealed the door behind her, switching on the red safelight that bathed everything in the color of dried blood. Twenty-four hours since Daniel's midnight confession to shadows, and she still couldn't shake the ice that had settled in her chest.
The film canister sat on the counter where she'd left it—innocent black plastic that might contain proof of her husband's whereabouts the night Clara Nguyen died. Or proof of something worse.
She loaded the film into the developer with practiced efficiency, muscle memory taking over while her mind churned. The chemical bath would either vindicate Daniel or damn him. No middle ground. No more uncertainty.
Fifteen minutes later, she hung the negatives to dry, squinting at the ghostly images. Sunset shots from the overlook. Daniel's profile against the sky. Her own reflection in the car window. Normal. Innocent.
Relief flooded through her until she reached the contact sheet.
Frame 23 showed Daniel at the overlook, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, staring out at the ocean. Standard portrait shot—nothing unusual except for the timestamp. 6:47 PM.
But frame 24 made her breath catch.
The same composition. The same angle. But superimposed over Daniel's figure was another image—a double exposure she didn't remember taking. Daniel again, but different. Closer to the camera. On a trail she recognized with sick certainty.
The cliff path. Dogleg Curve.
His face was turned away from the camera, but she knew those shoulders, that particular way he held his head when he was thinking. The timestamp read 9:23 PM.
Three hours later than the first shot. Thirty-seven minutes after Clara's body was discovered.
Mara's hands shook as she held the contact sheet up to the light. Double exposures happened—amateur mistake, advancing the film incorrectly. But she'd been shooting for fifteen years. She didn't make amateur mistakes.
And she sure as hell didn't remember taking any photos at Dogleg Curve.
"What the fuck," she whispered to the red-lit darkness.
She examined the negative strip more carefully. The double exposure was perfect—too perfect. Both images sharp, properly exposed, as if they'd been planned. As if her camera had somehow captured Daniel in two places at once.
Or as if she'd been at the cliffs that night and blocked it out entirely.
The thought hit her like a physical blow. She gripped the counter, fighting a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the chemical fumes. If she'd been at Dogleg Curve, if she'd taken that photo...
The darkroom door rattled. "Mara? You in there?"
Daniel's voice, muffled by wood and distance. Normal. Concerned. Nothing like the flat tone from last night.
"Almost finished," she called back, shoving the contact sheet into her jacket pocket. "Give me five minutes."
"Take your time. I'm making lunch."
His footsteps retreated toward the kitchen, and Mara sagged against the counter. She needed to think. Needed to process what she'd found before facing him across the kitchen table, pretending everything was normal.
But first, she needed prints.
She selected the clearest negative and fed it into the enlarger. The image projected onto the easel in stark black and white—Daniel on the cliff path, caught between shadows and fog. His posture was different here. Tense. Predatory.
The print emerged from the developer bath like a ghost gaining substance. Details sharpened with each passing second. The curve of his spine. The set of his jaw. And there, barely visible in the lower right corner, something that made her stomach lurch.
A pale smudge against the dark rocks. Human-shaped.
Clara's body.
Mara yanked the print from the bath, chemicals dripping onto the floor. The image was undeniable. Daniel, thirty-seven minutes after the discovery, standing over Clara Nguyen's corpse like he owned it.
She stared at the photograph until her eyes burned, willing it to change, to make sense. But the evidence was literally in black and white. Her husband had been at the murder scene. And somehow, impossibly, she'd been there to document it.
The darkroom door creaked open, spilling yellow light across the red-tinged darkness.
"Mara?" Daniel's silhouette filled the doorway. "You okay? You've been in here for—"
He stopped. His gaze found the print in her hands, and his face went white.
"Where did you get that?"
"I took it." The words came out steady, though her hands were shaking. "Last Tuesday night. At Dogleg Curve."
"That's impossible." But his voice lacked conviction. "We were at the overlook. You have photos of us at the overlook."
"I have photos of you at both places." She held up the contact sheet. "Double exposure. Same roll of film."
Daniel stepped into the darkroom, closing the door behind him. The space felt smaller now, claustrophobic. He moved toward her slowly, like she was a spooked animal.
"I don't remember being at the cliffs," he said quietly. "I would remember that."
"Would you?"
The question hung between them like a blade. Daniel's face crumpled, and for a moment he looked like a lost child.
"I don't know," he whispered. "I don't know anything anymore."
A car door slammed outside. Then another. Mara moved to the small window and peered through the darkroom's blackout curtain.
Two figures approached the house—a woman in a rumpled blazer and a younger man in uniform. The woman had the purposeful stride of someone who'd been asking questions for a living. Official questions.
"Shit." Mara's pulse spiked. "Police."
Daniel appeared beside her at the window, his face reflecting her own panic. "What do we do?"
The woman was already at the front door, finger poised over the doorbell. In thirty seconds, maybe less, she'd be asking questions Mara couldn't answer. Questions about Tuesday night, about Daniel's whereabouts, about things she didn't remember but had apparently witnessed.
"We tell the truth," Daniel said.
"What truth?" Mara turned to face him, the photograph still clutched in her hand. "That you were at a murder scene thirty-seven minutes after the body was found? That I was there too but don't remember it? That we both might be fucking insane?"
The doorbell rang. Once. Twice.
"Mrs. Kessler?" The woman's voice carried through the door. "Detective Finch, Sheriff's Department. I'd like to ask you and your husband a few questions."
Daniel reached for the photograph. "Let me handle this."
"No." Mara pulled it away from him. "You don't remember. I do the talking."
"But you don't remember either—"
"I remember enough." She looked at the print one more time—Daniel's figure looming over Clara's body like a guardian or a predator. Then she folded it carefully and slipped it into her pocket next to the contact sheet. "I remember loving you."
The doorbell rang again, longer this time. Insistent.
"That's not going to be enough," Daniel said.
"It has to be." Mara switched off the safelight, plunging them into darkness. "Because if they find out what we did—what we might have done—they'll take you away from me. And I can't let that happen."
"Even if I'm guilty?"
She found his hand in the darkness, intertwining their fingers. His skin was cold, but his grip was strong. Real. The most real thing in her increasingly uncertain world.
"Especially if you're guilty."