The Road Home by Michael Thomas Ford Page B

water, letting it fill the tank halfway. Replacing the lid, he agitated the tank for thirty seconds, then emptied it and once again filled it halfway.
    He repeated this process for ten minutes, during which he continued arguing with himself about the wisdom of maybe pursuing something with Will Janks. With every emptying of the developing tank, he talked himself out of it, and with every refilling, he changed his mind. By the time he was finished rinsing the film, he was exhausted, not from the physical effort of developing the film, but from the mental effort expended in fretting over a kiss.
    After the final emptying of the developing tank, he added a few drops of wetting agent and allowed it to sit for half a minute, tapping the sides of the tank to remove any bubbles that might have formed on the surface of the film. Then he removed the reel, gently twisted its two halves apart, and pulled the film free. To one end he attached a weighted film clip, and to the other an unweighted one. Then he hung the strip from the shower curtain rod and left it to dry while he went downstairs.
    â€œIs it soup yet?” his father asked when Burke walked into the kitchen. Lucy was sitting at the table, doing a crossword puzzle in the newspaper, while Burke’s father rinsed a chicken in the sink. Burke couldn’t help but notice that several small reddish feathers remained on the chicken’s body.
    â€œThat isn’t one of yours, is it?” he asked his father.
    â€œKilled not half an hour ago,” his father answered.
    Burke looked away. It was years since he’d endured the horrors of chicken killing: the blood, the smell, the warm innards, which had to be scooped out by hand, the feathers, which had to be plucked off and which stuck to everything. For years after leaving the farm, he’d avoided chicken altogether, and then he’d eaten it only when it was smothered in sauce or otherwise unrecognizable. It had taken a long time for him to look at a roast chicken without getting queasy, and he’d been relieved to find on his first night back that he could eat it again.
    â€œThe film is hanging up to dry,” he said, trying not to think about the chicken. “It takes about six hours.”
    â€œWe’ll be asleep by then,” his father said.
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Burke, looking at Lucy and winking. “I’ll wake you up.”
    He managed to make it through dinner, although the chicken leg on his plate was largely intact when he scooped the remains into the trash. And true to his word, his father was in bed and asleep by nine o’clock, although Lucy stayed up and played cards with him until a little after ten.
    By eleven the film was dry and he had cut it into manageable strips. He’d already hooked the scanner up to his laptop, and now it was just a matter of scanning the film. He put the first strip in and waited as the machine transferred the images to his computer. It took some time, and he was impatient. But finally the first three photos were processed.
    They were beautiful. The Yashica-Mat’s lenses appeared to be clean, with no mold or dust to mar the photographs. Each of the square images was lovely in its simplicity. The rock with the turtles. A grouping of wildflowers. A single leaf floating on the water, a dragonfly riding it like a raft. Burke was more than pleased, both with the camera and with his eye.
    He fed another strip of negatives into the scanner, then another. In the space of an hour he had scanned the entire first roll. And there were three more waiting to be developed. He couldn’t wait.
    As the last group of images appeared on the screen, he looked at them. The last one caught his attention. It showed Will’s face reflected in the surface of the water. Burke didn’t remember taking it, and he was startled by its unexpected beauty. Will wore an expression of total happiness.
    But something was wrong with the picture. When