No body was ever found.

The images were startling. Not landscapes or stiff family portraits. These were intimate: a woman’s bare shoulder turned from the lens, a hand hovering over a sleeping child’s brow, a man’s laugh frozen mid-cascade. Whoever took them had loved their subjects fiercely.

The rain fell in silver sheets over the coastal town of Whitby, but Elle didn’t notice. At forty-seven, she had learned to love the gray—the way it softened edges, muted the world’s demands, and let her think. She sat in the bay window of her bookshop, The Turning Tide , a cup of lapsang souchong cooling between her palms.

She took the portrait.