The screenshot of the screenshot of the screenshot.
I open it.
Sorry kids but I had to leave. I'm going to visit some family and get a break from here.
Twenty-two words. I've counted. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and I've already been counting.
My body counts in my sleep.
Twenty-two words that fit her whole absence into a text bubble the size of my thumbnail.
I read it, then I read it again.
Then—because I know the damn thing by heart and have for ten months and fourteen days—I screenshot it.
New screenshot. Same image. A photo of a photo of a photo.
The file goes to the top of my camera roll.
Above yesterday's win photos. Above Jaeger in the warm-up pen.
She goes on top of everything because she is the thing on top of everything.
I close the camera roll and open my contacts.
Scroll to M.
Mom.
The little blue letter next to her name from the last time I edited her contact card.
I was fifteen.
I added a photo—her on the fence at the ranch, squinting into the sun, one of Dad's Shiner Bocks in her hand.
I press the green button. My thumb hovers over ‘call.’
I don't press it. I have never pressed it. If she wanted to reach out, she would’ve called me by now.
But I’ve been hovering for nearly eleven months now.
I know—because Shiver found out six months ago and told me when he was drunk and crying about it—that they disconnected her line two months after she left.
The number doesn't ring anywhere.
My thumb doesn't know that.
My thumb keeps thinking if I press the button she'll answer.
I lock the phone and put it face-down on the passenger seat.
Both hands on the wheel.
Breathe.
One. Two. Three. Four.
She taught me that too.
