Page 24 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

I step closer slowly, like the desk might confess if I don’t spook it.

The pen cup by my monitor is off too.

Not by much. An inch, maybe less. Just enough that it isn’t sitting on the faint ring left in the wood where it always rests.

The pens inside are still lined up, but not in the order I put them in. Black, blue, black, red, mechanical pencil.

Now it’s blue, black, red, black, mechanical pencil.

My heartbeat stutters.

No.

No, no, no.

I set my bag down too fast and the strap slips off my shoulder. My fingers are already clumsy when I grab the drawer and pull it open the rest of the way.

Folders. Sticky notes. Charger. The gross little stash of throat lozenges I bought last week because the office air is dry enough to mummify a person.

Nothing obviously missing.

My pulse doesn’t care. It keeps climbing anyway.

I look at the desk surface again. At the monitor, the keyboard, the stack of invoices I left clipped together. They’re still clipped together, but crooked now, the top page shifted just slightly left.

It’s nothing.

It’s not nothing.

I reach for my camera bag before I even consciously decide to.

The zipper feels louder than it should as I yank it open. My camera body is there. Spare battery, lens cloth, notebook, card wallet…

I freeze.

The card wallet is unzipped.

For one stupid second my brain refuses to understand what I’m looking at. It just hangs there uselessly while my body goes cold all over.

Then my hand dives in.

One slot empty.

I check again, because denial is powerful and I’ve always respected the commitment of a good delusion.

Still empty.

I flip through every slot, fingers shaking harder now, pulse thudding in my ears.

Oh shit.

It’s the black sixteen gig card with the tiny silver scratch in one corner. Old enough that I stopped using it for active shoots, but too important to wipe.

I keep backups spread out because I’m not an idiot, and because life has taught me that if you only keep one copy of something you love, the universe gets ideas.

That card has photos from three years of jobs. Road trips, landscapes, old ranches. Horses, sunsets I couldn’t explain to anyone who wasn’t there, and stupid selfies with Evan where he refused to smile properly.

One blurry Christmas photo from when he was nineteen and trying too hard to look grown up in a sweater our mother bought him because it was “classically handsome,” which was her way of saying “boring.”