Simon smiled broadly at him. “I told you. This place is new, but I’ve had other camera shops. Anyway, he was a proud man, like you. Have you mentioned this place to your wife? Or your daughter?”

He hadn’t. “How do you know about them?”

“They’re in your photos. Your daughter is struggling at school, isn’t she?”

Daniel blanched. His phone had only just pinged with the email. A formal warning from the school, driven by Mrs. Kowalick. Milly’s grades weren’t getting better. “How did you—”

“I’ve been having another conversation with someone about truth—”

“What truth?”

Simon held Gramps’s camera up to his eye. “The camera is showing truth in your life . . . and in your family.”

“Are you serious? A camera is showing truth? It makes more sense that you’ve been manipulating—”

“Well, can you explain some things? Like people appearing in your photos without you knowing?”

A single point had to elbow its way through a crowd of thoughts to get attention. “Easy to do in Photoshop, Simon. My twelve-year-old daughter could pull that off.”

Simon wandered to a shelf in the back of the lab and selected a folder from a ceiling-high bookcase. He placed it on the counter and then flicked through pages of clear plastic sleeves, each holding strips of photographic negatives. He ran a white-gloved finger down a page until he reached the bottom row, pulling out a strip of negatives and holding it up to the light. “Number 24. Have a look for yourself.”

Daniel held it up to the light as well. In the ghosted negative, reflections of his staff grouped on his deck, a person stood next to Peter with flowing black hair and thick white glasses. Howard.

“I’m not doctoring your photos, Daniel.”

Daniel was unconvinced. “Double exposures, then?”

Simon laughed with a soft warmth. “That’s often the next guess, but no. This is truth.”

Looking closer at the negative, Daniel saw his black fingers entwined with Anna’s. He shoved the strip toward Simon. “Truth, hey? This shows me cheating with Anna, and I’m not. I have done nothing wrong! If your magical camera shows truth, it got that one wrong.”

“Perhaps the truth is in your heart. Others might not always see the truth people hold in their heart, but the camera never lies.”

“I’m not buying it. It’s possible that you just found out about Gramps. You didn’t give me a chance to see the order book, so that could be a fake. There’s no evidence you met Gramps, just a series of emotional hooks thrown into the water to catch me out. I’ve got to admit, you had me for a moment.”

Simon threw a glance at the photos on the wall and rubbed his hands together. “That’s okay. Truth can be hard to accept the first time it’s revealed.”