She pondered this as she organized the darkroom to develop the film from the Exakta. Before turning out the lights, she went to the shelf by the mantel and took out her old Leica. She hadn’t touched it in years, not since the last trip with Jace.

She’d paid too much for the Leica at an auction house. Despite Jace’s objections about the cost, she had to have it. After the accident, she had not touched the camera again. There was still film in it—her last pictures of Jace. She’d never developed the film because she didn’t want to expose her final memories of him.

Holding the camera flat on the palm of her hand, she weighed her options. She could put it away again. She could open it right now and destroy the pictures. Or she could expose the film and see what she’d been afraid of seeing for so long.

Deep breath.

Then she turned out the lights and went to work.

Less than an hour later, Camille was looking at the digitized contact sheets from both cameras on her laptop. The pictures from the trip with Jace were good, but now she realized that back then, she was still learning her craft. The photos she’d taken in Vermont showed more confidence and maturity. There was one portrait of her father and Hank that captured their surprise and delight so perfectly that it brought fresh tears to her eyes.

There was one shot Jace had taken of her, a simple snapshot. It had been the year of the unfortunate hairstyle, but her smile blazed across the years—the smile of a young woman who had no idea how hard a loss could hit. There was another shot of the two of them, which she’d taken with the shutter set on a timer.

Irrational as it was, she’d held the notion that once she looked at the pictures, she would see their marriage as it truly was—not perfect. Just perfectly ordinary. An ordinary life. And she’d spent the past five years convinced that their marriage, their love, had been extraordinary, never to be equaled, and certainly not surpassed.

She stared for a long time at the pictures. The final shot was one she’d taken moments before their final climb. There was Jace, grinning and confident, draped in rope and carabiners, ready for adventure.

Her last image of him. “Hi, Jace,” she said softly to the empty room. “It’s good to see you again.”

He had been canonized by gilded memories. She’d forgotten his flaws—and he did have them. He’d been annoyed at her that day, scolding her for taking pictures when she should have been focused on roping up for the climb. He’d never quite understood her passion for photography. Jace had thought the shop was fluff, filled with knickknacks for tourists. He was only human, after all. Yet the flaws were obliterated by the spectacular way he’d died.

Jace was a good man, a fine doctor, and he had loved her. In an act of indisputable heroism, he’d traded his life for hers. Yet sometimes, when he’d been alive, he didn’t see her. Now she faced that truth with a clarity that cut like a knife. “We weren’t perfect,” she said aloud. “We didn’t need to be. And getting over you is not going to take away what we had.”