He turned the frame over.
There was a date stamped on the back of the photo paper. Digital printing code.
09/14/2019.
Ryder stared at the date.
September 14th.
He closed his eyes. He did the math.
September.Count back nine months. August. July. June. May. April. March. February. January. December.
December 2018.
Ryder opened his eyes. The room seemed to tilt. The floor dropped out from under him.
December 2018.
He was still here in December. He didn't leave until January 15th.
He remembered December. He remembered the snow. He remembered the night in his truck by the creek, the heater running, the windows fogged up. He remembered Elena crying, telling him she loved him, begging him to stay.
He remembered leaving two weeks later.
He remembered ignoring her calls.
He looked at the baby in the photo.
You were there,the photo screamed.You were there when this happened.
Ryder felt a wave of nausea so violent he nearly dropped the frame.
He wasn't just a guy who ran away. He wasn't just an ex-boyfriend.
He was a father.
And he had left his pregnant girlfriend in the middle of a Montana winter to go chase a belt buckle.
"Oh my god," Ryder whispered.
The frame cracked in his grip.
The sound of the front door opening echoed through the house.
"Ryder?"
Elena’s voice. She was home early.
Ryder stood in the center of his son’s room, holding the evidence of his own unforgivable sin, and waited for the executioner.
IV. The Math
Ryder stood frozen in the center of the bedroom, the small square frame heavy as a tombstone in his hand.
December.
The month replayed in his mind, not as a memory, but as an indictment. He remembered the cold. He remembered the desperate, frantic way Elena had held him that last month. He remembered her asking him, one night in the truck while the snow piled up on the windshield, "Do you ever think about the future, Ryder? About us?"
