Amelia circled the table. Something wasn’t right with the photo of children playing on a wooden bridge. It was a wonderfully composed shot but a hot spot, a too bright area, captured her attention. It detracted from the picture, drawing her eyes from the center of attention within the photograph. Why had Mike missed this flaw? Of course, if he liked the photo a great deal he could always retouch it in the darkroom, burn in and darken the hot spot.

Therein lay the advantage of black-and-white film. In the darkroom, you retained control of the final product. This was also true of digital photographs. People did remarkable things with them using Photoshop or Paint Shop, neither of which Amelia understood or was prepared to master.

Amelia scrutinized the remaining photographs. They appeared flawless. She gathered them up carefully and returned them to Mike’s container. Then she sat for a moment, intensely aware of the silence around her.

Since May left to live with her aunt in South Asheville, the house seemed inordinately quiet. May studied at home, and her presence had given Amelia a sense of safety at times when the other women were out of the house. Amelia missed her. When she was alone in the house, she always struggled to control her anxiety. She would never tell them, but she would pull back the shower curtains and pound her hand against clothes in the closet, to assure herself that no one was there. What if someone was there? What if, one day as she ran her hand across the clothes, she saw a man’s shoes? What would she do? Thinking like this frightened her. Amelia grabbed her purse, whipped a scarf around her neck, tucked the box of photographs beneath her arm, and headed for the door.

On the porch, she stopped and perused the neighborhood. Was that man really gone? He could have doubled back. Satisfied that he was nowhere in sight, she hastened to her car, drove onto Elk Road, and headed for Mars Hill.

Traffic on the road to Mars Hill seemed unusually heavy and slowed considerably as she neared the park by the river. What was going on? In the near distance, lights atop a police car flashed. A policeman stood in the middle of the road directing traffic into one lane, where another policeman raised his hand, stopped each car, and asked for driver’s licenses. Amelia slowed, stopped, produced her license, and was waved on. If not for all the excitement and the comings and goings in the park, she would have thought this was a routine traffic check. It was not!