Now on Sundays and Wednesdays, Morgan didn’t even plan on going to Silver Maple Assisted Living anymore. She knew she’d be driving straight to the beach. They’d have to take Grandpa’s car today, since hers had been ditched God knows where. Along with her phone and all her gear.

The cops said they’d call her when it turned up. They’d said “when,” not “if,” as though the reemergence of her Civic was inevitable. Regardless of whether or not her vehicle came back into her life, her camera was long gone. She knew that for a fact, as she imagined her gear bag being rifled through like a fresh carcass being gutted by zombies. One hand would take her 70–200mm lens, another would snatch her 50mm. The camera body itself would be passed around. Someone would grab her flash, the 600EX II-RT she’d paid five hundred dollars for brand-new, and it would all be pawned. Except for the lithium-ion batteries––they would crack those open like oysters and drink the acid. Maybe the cops would recover her SD cards months or even years from now, lying on the table of a drug dealer’s house, being used to cut cocaine.

She didn’t have insurance on any of it. That would have been the responsible adult thing to do. She’d pay the consequences for that now, though. It would take at least five more jobs like the Reynolds party to recoup her equipment. Five more jobs for which she would need––and not have––her camera.

The envelope from Bennett lay on her computer desk. She had to return it.

Morgan sat on the edge of the mattress, her shoulders slumped under the weight of everything. How was she going to tell her mother she couldn’t help with groceries this week? Or pay her portion of the phone bill this month? She couldn’t bear to think about the moment when her mom would inevitably check the Nestlé tin and discover it to be empty. Although her parents had graciously refused her offer to pay rent, Morgan, after shooting family photographs, stuffed a few hundred dollars into the Nestlé chocolate-chip tin the night before she knew her mom was going to make cookies. No one ever mentioned the money, but it was gone the next day when Morgan checked, and so always, on the last Friday of every month, she refilled it. She knew her mother had come to rely on that income more than she would be proud to admit.

Morgan cradled her head in her hands. The scene from last night played on a relentless loop in her mind—another image that would haunt her every time she closed her eyes. She saw the cop’s body buck with the impact of the first bullet. He’d danced, almost, his toes frantically tapping the tile as he’d fought to regain his footing. The fingers of his left hand were curled around the grip of his gun. His right hand reached toward her, grasping only empty air. And then the rest of the bullets had slammed into him and the surrounding area.