At night the Carlisle Museum looked much darker and spookier than it had during the day. All the repairs the old building needed looked much more apparent in the moonlight. They made the Carlisle look somewhat haunted.

I walked up to the front door of the museum and took a deep breath. My fingers were hovering just above the keypad, which was silver and looked as though it was nearly glowing. This was the moment of truth, and I could only hope that Beverly DeSantos actually trusted me enough to tell me the right code.

“Nancy?” said George, from off to my right. “What are you waiting for?”

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. Pressing each button with my index finger, I typed in 5-7-9-6.

Each of the four lights on the keypad flashed green, and I could hear the satisfying click of the door unlocking.

“It worked!” said Bess.

I glanced at her and smiled. I felt just as surprised as she looked.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get inside before somebody sees us.” I pushed open the door and we all slipped inside the museum’s dark entryway.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. The museum had so many windows that there was no way we would be able to turn on any lights. Someone outside might see and my entire plan would be ruined. Instead we all just walked forward slowly. The light streaming in from the lampposts outside was just enough to see by.

“So what do we do first?” asked George. She was whispering, even though I wasn’t sure it was entirely necessary. There wasn’t anyone here, and no one would be able to hear us talking from outside.

Even so, I couldn’t help but whisper back. “I want one more look at the images of Grace, Jacob, and me,” I said, heading past the front desk in the direction of the exhibit room. “Beverly’s house was filled with photographs. Some were old and taken with film. Some were much newer and, I think, taken with a digital camera. I have a feeling that the photos of Grace and Jacob, and the one of me, had to have been taken with an old film camera, to match the quality of the rest of the photo so well.”

Bess and George nodded, and we entered the exhibit space. “The image with Jacob is that one,” said George, pointing off to the left side of the room.

“Great,” I said. I walked over to the photograph and turned my phone’s flashlight on. I hoped we were far enough from the windows that no one would spot it. I spent a minute looking at the photograph closely, then walked over to the one with Grace’s picture in it and studied that one too. Finally I looked at the photograph with me in the background. I still didn’t know much about photography, but I felt confident that the original DeSantos photos and the pictures of Jacob, Grace, and me must have been taken by a similar type of camera. The tone and the quality of the inserted images matched the rest of the photo so closely. Whoever had taken the pictures of the three of us would have to own an old film camera from around the same time period.