Found film was a particular obsession of hers, particularly now that digital imagery had supplanted film photography. She loved the thrill of opening a door to the past and being the first to peek in. Often while she worked with an old roll of film or movie reel, she tried to imagine someone taking the time to get out their camera and take pictures or shoot a movie, capturing a candid moment or an elaborate pose. For Camille, working in the darkroom was the only place she could see clearly, the place where she felt most competent and in control.

Today’s project was to rescue a roll of thirty-five millimeter film found by a client she’d never met, a professor of history named Malcolm Finnemore. The film had been delivered by courier from Annapolis, and the instructions inside indicated that he required a quick turnaround. Her job was to develop the film, digitize the negatives with her micrographic scanner, convert the files into positives and email the results. The courier would be back by three to pick up the original negatives and contact sheets.

Camille had no problem with deadlines. She didn’t mind the pressure. It forced her to be clear-headed, organized, in control. Life worked better that way.

All her chemicals waited in readiness–precisely calibrated, carefully measured into beakers, and set within reach. She didn’t need the light to know where they were, lined up like instruments on a surgeon’s tray–developer, stop bath, fixer, clearing agent–and she knew how to handle them with the delicacy of a surgeon. Once the film was developed, dried and cured, she would inspect the results. She loved this part of her craft, being the revealer of lost and found treasures, opening forgotten time capsules with a single act of light.

There were those, and her late husband, Jace, had been among them, who regarded this as a craft or hobby. Camille knew better. One look at a print by Ansel Adams–no relation to Jace–was proof that art could happen in the darkroom. Behind each finished, epic print were dozens of attempts until Adams found just the right setting.

Camille never knew what the old film would reveal, if it hadn’t been spoiled by time and the elements. Perhaps the professor had come across a film can that had been forgotten and shoved away in the Smithsonian archives or some library storage room at Annapolis.

She wanted to get this right, because the material was potentially significant. The roll she was carefully spooling onto the reel could be a major find. It might reveal portraits of significant people no one had ever seen before, landscapes now changed beyond recognition, a rare shot of a moment in time that no longer existed in this world.