The first time tech magnate Julian Vance understood that his wife had been fading away for years, she was already a ghost.

Three hundred miles north, in the sleepy coastal town of Cannon Beach, Oregon, Clara Elise breathed in the salty, freezing air. She wasn't Clara Vance anymore. She had signed the lease on the tiny, drafty cabin using her maiden name.

The cabin was a fraction of the size of the San Francisco penthouse's master bathroom, but it felt infinitely larger. For the first time in years, she didn't feel like she was suffocating under the weight of someone else's empire.

She stood in the small secondary bedroom, which she had spent the last two days converting into a darkroom. The smell of developer fluid and stop bath filled the air—a scent that brought a genuine smile to her face. It smelled like the old garage in Silicon Valley. It smelled like the days when Julian would wrap his arms around her waist from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder while they waited for a photograph to reveal itself in the chemical bath.

She shook the memory away. That Julian was gone.

Clara pinned a wet photograph to the drying line. It was a stark, black-and-white image of the jagged coastal rocks fighting off the violent ocean tide. It was raw. It was real.

A knock at her front door startled her. She wiped her hands on her flannel shirt and walked to the living room. It was Elias, an older man who owned the local art gallery in town.

"Clara," he smiled, holding a thermos. "Brought you some clam chowder. Figured you were too busy smelling like chemicals to cook."

"You're a lifesaver, Elias," Clara said, accepting the thermos.

"Any new prints ready for the gallery?"