Page 261 of These Tears

By the time I reach the porch, I am fairly certain I have aged, bonded with nature and developed a mild allergy to Elias’ surprises.

‘They like you,’ he states with a smirk.

I huff out the breath I’ve been holding as he lets us in.

‘Are you going to leave them outside?’ I ask when the door closes behind us and my heart remembers it’s supposed to pump blood.

‘Brute and Menace will be fine. They can go in and out,’ he says, nodding towards the door. A formidable flap shakes in punctuation – one the dogs can use.

I narrow my eyes at it.

I was wondering why he was demolishing a perfectly good door the other day.

‘I have another surprise.’

My breath jams halfway as I look at him in horror.

He’s laughing from the bottom of his lungs now, walking backwards. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

‘Please tell me there’s nothing furry involved in this one.’ I’m shaking my head, but as he beckons me with a crook of his finger and a mischievous grin, a strange kind of heat lights up at the base of my spine, somewhat dampening the anxiety.

I begin to follow until we stop in front of the chain-door.

‘Open it,’ he says.

I hesitate for only an intake of breath as my eyes find the key stuck in the lock.

Once. Twice. Three times, the key turns. The wood gives and opens a crack. The scent of plastic and chemicals pours out.

We walk into pitch-black darkness.

He takes my hand, guiding it to a power switch on the right that didn’t exist before.

‘It has a battery bank charged by the solar panels, with its own generator as backup,’ he says and pushes the switch.

Click.

A low red glow blooms to life overhead. Soft and eerie, it turns his profile into something unholy. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust.

An extraction fan whirrs somewhere in the wall. Beneath it, the trays are set in a neat row, the chemical bottles lined up beside them.

On the left, he’s built a narrow workbench from rough planks and trestles; an old enlarger sits there like a mechanical insect, its column bolted to the table, lens gleaming faintly in the red light.

Beside it is a compact pigment printer and a pack of transparency film.

A darkroom.

My heart nearly breaks out of my chest.

‘Oh God, Elias…’ I murmur, turning to him. ‘How did you know to get all this?’

‘Anna and Conall took inventory of what you had at home. I ordered whatever I could, so I might have forgotten something. We can buy it.’

My fingertips settle on the edge of the enlarger. The cold metal steadies my frantic breath to an extent.

For months, every image has ended after the lens cap came on. Now, there is a way to turn the files into paper. Trays wait for chemistry. Blank walls wait for prints.

He has not merely remembered that this is a part of me. He understood why finishing the photos matters.