Chapter One

FLORENCE

Day turns into night at four in the afternoon, but it's not easy to see the moment it happens. In the winter, the sea and the sky are the same shade of gray without any horizon line between them. The moon pulls the tide out along the banks of Puget Sound. I'm sitting on South Beach below Discovery Park, waiting for the perfect light. I come here with my camera once all the people are gone, to find the pictures I have in my mind. Once the water recedes, the seaweed and shells lie still in the sand and rocks. I switch the setting on my camera that turns off the color. My photographs are black, white, and grey, the colors of Seattle in the winter.

The small world around my feet composes itself for me. My camera looks for perfect stillness. I click the shutter over and over, but I can't find the image I want. It should be perfect. There's no wind. The light of the full moon is bleeding through the clouds in the air, so soft after the rain. I wait.

A great blue heron lands on a rock not twenty feet from where I stand. His elegant, long neck casts a faint shadow on the water. When he turns his head, his yellow eyes look right at me. If he will only stay in this proud attitude I can capture him with my lens. As the camera clicks, he spreads his powerful wings and takes flight, so graceful and free in the air. How I wish I could fly with him over the dark water.

I walk the beach, looking down for my pictures. There's so many here if you know where to look. I find five or six that I think will be good. Then I point my camera along the empty shore line and shoot the fusion of sand and sea.

It starts to rain again. I pull my parka tightly around my thin body and climb up the path that leads out of the park. I can't wait to get home and see the images I have caught in my camera.

After dinner I curl up in my bed and look at the pictures on the display screen of my camera. I'm pleased to find some beautiful rock compositions that I can print in the morning. But then, I'm confused. There's a picture of the shoreline I remember taking. It is exactly as I remember it, except for one thing. The beach was empty. I was alone. But that is not what I see in my camera.

In the middle of my photo there's a man, on the beach, looking directly at me.