Daniel flicked through the envelope. The staff of Crossroads Counseling appeared in every photo. These weren’t Gramps’s last memories. Someone in the practice had used his camera. Annoyance bit deep into him. It had to be Peter, the photography buff, but encroaching on personal space like that was out of character for him.

So who took the photos?

“Excuse me!” A woman with a laundry basket full of clothes pushed past him and into the laundromat.

Daniel sputtered an apology, still reeling from the intrusion into his privacy. He would raise it at their staff meeting tomorrow.

He flicked through the photographs again. Anna counseled a couple. Cameron, his business manager, stared out his office window as if dreaming of somewhere else. Jade, his practice manager, had her cell phone pressed into a tearstained cheek. Ordinary photos of ordinary people doing ordinary things. And echoes of the photos from Gramps’s album—his staff didn’t even know their photo was being taken.

In the next photo Anna stood in his office doorway, staring beyond the camera, her head tilted, her cheeks flushed under a faraway stare. He’d never seen her like that, and why would he?

Monique winked at the camera and blew a kiss to whoever was holding it. He reached for his cuffs. So it wasn’t her.

Two faces weren’t represented: his and Peter’s. Friend and colleague aside, a line had been crossed.

In another photo, papers were strewn across a desk, a mix of bills and bank statements. Maybe this photo belonged to someone else and Simon had mixed up two orders when pulling them from the film processor.

In the final photo, a book sat on his office chair. A familiar book. The sharp contrast of two words in chunky black writing on a stark white cover. Two words burned into his memory.

No Secrets.

But something was missing—something he’d seen thousands of times, something that had brought mixed emotions when he saw it for the first time. Pride. Nerves.

His name.

Below the title was white space where his name usually sat. His name had been erased.

Daniel’s mouth went dry as a memory knocked at a long-shut-off door in his mind.

He needed to know two things.

Who took this photo?

And why?

Ten

Han Solo stood tall on the desk in front of Kelly as Dr. Anthony Scott tweaked Chewbacca and Yoda in the line of Star Wars figurines. “This is the downside of keeping children distracted during a diagnosis.”

The soft smiles of animal puppets filled the shelves behind the doctor, and a haphazard, jagged Lego castle teetered on a pint-size table to her left.

Kelly looked back to the doctor and into his searching gaze. “Kelly, I need to ask you about Mendacium.”