“Well, I didn’t touch it! M-Maybe Mr. Stephens or someone else picked it up, moved it from wherever you left it to develop. The kneeler, right? That’s where you usually leave your pictures, but I didn’t see this one there. I mean, I didn’t notice. I swear that’s not my thumb! I didn’t touch it—” I kept babbling and I sounded unequivocally thumbprint guilty, and this was like when my second-grade teacher thought I’d purposefully spilled hand soap on the bathroom floor because I acted like I had even though I hadn’t. Well, I didn’t press my thumb on Mercy’s developing photo either. In both cases, I perseverated on my accusers being convinced I was the culprit, and then I couldn’t stop thinking What if I did it? What if it was me? and I saw myself doing the things I hadn’t done because I couldn’t (and still can’t) stop making worst-case scenarios real in my head.

“Art! Stop. I’m not blaming you or Mr. Stephens or me. No one put their thumb on the picture, okay? Jesus. That’s not why I wanted you to look at it. Relax. You’re okay, no one touched it.”

“Oh. Really?” I inspected the photo closer. There were no telltale swoops and swirls of a fingerprint, but the distortion or discoloration still looked to be the shape of a thumb pad. She had to be messing with me. I fought the urge to measure the blob against my thumb and I wondered how Mercy would react if I asked her to hold hers up to the photo.

She asked, “You know what this is then, right?”

“You’re sure it’s not a thumbprint? Because it looks like one to me. Not mine, but—”

“Fucking yes, I’m sure.”

“So, what am I looking at then?”

“It’s evidence. Proof.”

“Of what?” I flashed to our first day together in the Datsun and her I’m-looking-for-evidence answer to my what’s-with-the-photos question, an answer I’d long assumed was a joke.

“I can’t believe you’re not getting this right away.”

I asked, “Someone shook the photo, like they’re not supposed to?”

“I said no one touched it!”

“Okay, then, holy fuck…. Aliens? Leonard Nimoy’s head? I don’t know what you’re getting at. Stop yelling at me!”

She snatched the photo away and sighed. Could one’s life be measured in the collective spent oxygen of sighs one received? Christ, I hoped not. “We spent a whole day in Providence researching this shit, and you don’t see it. Love ya, Art, but you’re so goddamn oblivious about what’s going on around you sometimes.” Mercy sighed protractedly again, which really wasn’t very fair.

I shrugged and said, “Sorry?”