A dusty, scratched, black-and-beige box sat next to the Cameo, on top a thick, dirty-white serrated plastic knob and a small cylindrical trigger also in plastic. On the camera’s face was a recessed lens beneath a scratched red label: Kodak. This camera had lived a life.

Daniel fingered the tiny white square that hung from it: $95 or W.I.N. It must not work. This would interest only someone who wanted to relive long-forgotten childhood memories.

Farther along the shelf the cameras evolved with the decades. Shining silver replaced dark wood. The black was a constant but moved from leather to plastic. At the end of the shelf sat a stout, proud camera with a large hooded bulb hovering over it like a gargoyle on a stone crypt. A technological marvel of its day, but its thick buttons and cogs now out of place in a world of screens. Its tiny white paper square announced $500 or W.I.N.

Daniel picked it up and squinted through the viewfinder. The cameras on the shelves sprang to life, the leather now new, the wood buffed, the silver polished. Razor-sharp edges and fine detail. Simon wasn’t kidding; the clarity was incredible.

Daniel swung around to see what the camera would make of the frames on the opposite wall. Slick, parallel lines of silver hair filled his vision, and Daniel jumped a mile.

“There’s just something about the clarity old cameras provide, isn’t there?”

Daniel fumbled to put the camera back on the shelf. “You scared the life out of me!”

“I hope not. Life is all we have. That, and truth.”

Simon reached for the wooden camera with the concertina nose, his voice a reverent whisper. “This is the best photography, capturing moments of reality. It’s not like today’s technology where software and filters create a world we’d like to believe is real and photographs are deleted because they’re not perfect.”

Daniel forced the cadence from his voice. His professional voice. “You love cameras, don’t you?”

Simon smiled, his eyes drifting beyond Daniel to the shelves. “I love the truth my cameras show. We can’t trust our memories. They gloss over details, change words to ones we wish we’d used, and bury the secrets we try to hide. Photos give us clear memories and show us what really happened. The camera never lies, you know.”

Daniel’s breath deserted him. The phrase from the bottom of Gramps’s camera.

“The camera reveals how our lives truly are. We can’t trick it, even if sometimes we think we can trick ourselves and everyone around us.”

Daniel chuckled. “You should be a counselor.”

“Why is that?”

“You seem to have great clarity, to use your word. That’s what you need when you’re dealing with people’s issues.”

“And your own, I suspect.”