SAM DECKER: The morning after she died, I brought the exposed film back from the hospital, thinking I’d develop it straightaway, but I didn’t. For weeks I’d been working in the darkroom without her, waiting for her to get better, and seeing that film on Lilly’s shelf made it easier to pretend she’d be coming back. Then came the funeral. I didn’t cry until I got to the darkroom, where it was something private between her and me. After that, working got hard. The smallest things left the biggest gaps. The missing sound of her breathing or the floor shifting under her weight. The feeling that if I stepped to the right, I’d brush against her arm. At some point, I started resenting that four-inch-thick roll of undeveloped film. Every time I came into the darkroom, I felt it staring at me, waiting for me to do what Lilly had asked. Maybe I would have felt different if I didn’t already have an unfinished job of my own, but Lilly was the only one who knew about the canister I’d been holding on to, and it felt like she was testing me. I took her out of the darkroom and put her in the fridge next to Conway, where I knew she would keep.

One night I’m drinking beers with Conway in a dream and he says, Don’t be an asshole, Decker, who else could she trust? You’re the only one as fussy as she is. Fine, I told him, but I’m still leaving your roll alone. Why would I give a shit what you do with that? Conway said. I’ve been dead twenty-three years.

The next night I closed up the coffeehouse at the usual time, but instead of catching the sunset, I went upstairs. First golden hour I’d skipped since I started the place. Over the next eight hours, I made contact sheets for all 680 shots. I was wrong to think it’d be quiet work. Anyone standing outside the darkroom door would’ve thought I was cracked, but I was just dictating one last letter to the air. I told her when I was arranging the negatives on the photo paper, and when I was placing the paper in the developer. I told her what I missed about her as I put each sheet in the stop bath, and what I remembered about her as I rinsed it and hung it to dry. Inspecting each exposure, I described what was beautiful in each of those last pictures she had taken, and what was difficult to see.