But in the dead center of the frame, perfectly sharp by some miracle of physics, was a woman.

Elias remembered that night. He remembered the biting January wind tunnel of the station and the frantic rhythm of his own heart because he was ten minutes late for a first date. He remembered the "click" of the shutter as he tripped over a loose floor tile, the camera swinging wildly on its strap.

He realized that for everyone else in that frame, that second was gone—dissolved into the unremarkable static of a Monday night. But because his finger had slipped, that woman stayed forever in the center of the storm. She was the only person in New York who wasn't in a hurry.

He had ignored the woman that night. He had ignored the crane. He had run past her, breathless, to a date that would eventually fizzle out by dessert.