Lying about lies. How are we supposed to trust you?

Mr. Stephens wedged back into the three-way conversation, dissecting the lowering device, showing me the gears and hand crank that reset the unit. Then Father W. parried and asked if I would consider studying theology at Providence College as a possible step toward the seminary. Mr. Stephens and Father W. shared a raucous laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, though I think their notions of what was ridiculous were not the same. Father W. clapped my back and said he thought priesthood would suit me, which I took as a total dig and a dire forecast of a dearth of future romantic opportunities.

Ha! Will you stop. You were not *that* pathetic.

Already a bit punch drunk by the time I wobbled back to the Datsun, Mercy pulled me into the car. I recoiled and flailed into the passenger seat like a vacuum cleaner’s power cord.

“Look at this! I won’t say anything else until you tell me what you see.” Her too-cool-for-school affect gone, replaced by a stranger, UFO-eyed manic Mercy. An unsure laugh leaked out of me. She grabbed two fistfuls of my lapels and ragdolled me in the seat. “I’m serious! No fucking around—”

“Okay, okay. Jeez.”

“Hold out your hands.” She had a photo pinched between two fingers. “Make sure you don’t touch the film part, and hold it right …” She hectored instructions all but requiring I wear protective gloves and deposited the photo into my compliant hands.

At first blush, it was her standard photo of the open casket and the deceased in repose, similar composition and camera angle. But there was a green blue blob on the film, and it hovered over the dead woman’s chest, blotting out part of the open lid and the floral wreaths in the background. The blob was oblong, and its borders were porous, the color diffuse.

“Do you see it?”

I said, “It’s a thumbprint, right? You touched the photo while it was still developing.”

“No, why would I do that?”

“I meant by accident. Didn’t think you did it on purpose.”

“Not my thumb. I know how to handle film.”