The Echo in the Desk

The rain drummed against the window of David’s home office, a rhythmic counterpoint to Maya’s growing unease. She was looking for a misplaced tax document, a mundane chore that had led her to open the deep bottom drawer of his heavy oak desk—a drawer she realized, with a small jolt, she had never seen open before.
Beneath a stack of dull folders, she found a manila envelope, slightly yellowed. It felt heavy and substantial. Curious, she opened the metal clasp and tilted the contents onto the blotter.
It was a small collection of candid, glossy photographs.
Maya picked up the top one and felt the world tilt. It was her.
She was sitting at a café in Paris, laughing, a coffee cup caught halfway to her mouth. She looked younger, her hair cut in a bob she hadn’t worn in years.
She knew this photo. It was taken during a solo trip she’d taken to celebrate her 25th birthday. A trip she remembered fondly because it was the year before everything changed. The year before she moved across the country and met David at a street fair in Seattle.
Her breath hitched. She flipped the photo over.
On the back, in David’s precise, slightly angular handwriting, was a date: Oct 12, 2018.
They had met in November 2021.