“A few ways.” Doyle tapped the gray logo stamped repetitively across the back. “This brand of photo paper was local to the tristate area, but they couldn’t compete with the volume produced by companies like Kodak and Agfa. They went out of business, I want to say, just before 1990?” Doyle flipped the photo to show Larkin the now-cleaned-up teenage girl on a bench. “In most cases regarding storage, colored paper won’t last even ten years, but this image has no fogging, so it wasn’t a recent development with a batch of old, expired paper.” He turned it back around a second time. “And this string of gibberish is data relevant to the minilab that did the printing.”

Larkin met Doyle’s eyes and asked, “A date. A location.”

“Nothing so useful. Part of the information is applicable to the machine itself. Say a small business owned and operated three of them—002 might be the second machine. This number here might imply the job or roll number done that given day. And this section here, I believe, is in regard to any manual color correction done by the operator. In this instance, it looks like a default code, so they probably didn’t make any adjustments during printing.”

Larkin asked, “Hundreds, if not thousands, of retro family photos in the city might have similar to the exact same code on the back.”

“Right.”

“Perfect,” he muttered.

Doyle chuckled at Larkin’s deadpan delivery before saying, “You were right about artists wanting stories, though. In fact, photography is the art of subtle fabrication, of pushing a particular narrative. Susan Sontag wrote, ‘The camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.’ That reality is hidden in the photographer’s decisions of not only light and texture, but the actual geometry of the photograph itself.”

“It sounds like you’re reading from an influencer’s vade mecum.”

Doyle’s head fell forward, as if he were trying to tuck his chin to his chest. “A master’s in art history, and he compares it to The Real Freshman Handbook for social media bobbleheads.”

“I’ve misspoken.”

Doyle raised his head.

After a brief pause, Larkin began to add, “I did not mean to imply your schooling—” But he stopped abruptly when Doyle smiled—and it wasn’t a social or masking expression, but his usual and true, genuine smile—a Duchenne smile, was the technical name.

It was the crow’s-feet.

Dead giveaway every time.

“What,” Larkin asked.

“You can just say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

“I’m sorry.”