Seventeen missed calls

3:47 a.m.

Mom — 17 missed calls

Mom: pick up

Mom: please

Mom: it’s not what you think

Mom: okay it’s exactly what you think

Voicemail — 2:11

She turned the phone face-down on the nightstand and watched the ceiling go grey, then gold. In the morning she would call back. In the morning she would have to decide who she was going to be about all of this.

For now there was just the dark, and seventeen little proofs that somebody wanted her.