Archie
I don't know how long I sat there staring at that photograph. Long enough that my next scheduled call passed unanswered, long enough that my assistant knocked twice, hesitantly, before I finally told her to reschedule everything for the rest of the afternoon.
I turned the image over in my hands again and again, searching for some detail that would disprove what my own eyes kept insisting was true. The lighting was poor. The angle was strange, shot through glass at a slight distance, distortion possible. Photographs could be manipulated easily enough these days, I told myself. Anyone with the right software could alter an image convincingly, layer one face over another, construct something that looked real but wasn't.
I wanted, desperately, to believe that's exactly what this was.
