her dorm room, I made her out to be a murderer. What did that do to a person? How could I ever fix that?
"Autumn…" Her name rides on a pained whisper. I reach for her and my fingers grip the sides of her waist. "What I said was inexcusable. There was no reason for it. And I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." My nose burns and my vision swims as rain pelts around us.
Autumn's lower lip quakes but she pulls it in, pressing it tightly to her upper lip to keep from crying. “I have one question for you.”
I nod. “Anything.”
Her face searches mine. “Do you regret our choice as much as I do?”
My heart stops for a few beats and I wonder if a healthy twenty-eight-year-old is capable of a heart attack. She’s spoken aloud the one thing I’ve never said, and it feels so good to know I’m not alone. I knew she didn’t enjoy the choice she made, but I never knew if she regretted it, if she wished there was a ten-year-old little boy or girl standing beside us now calling us Mom or Dad.
“Only every day,” I admit.
My throat catches. I'd thought Autumn hadn't struggled, hadn't cared very much. She so easily cast me aside and I thought she moved on. I was wrong. So, so wrong. Of all people, I should've figured it out by now. Between watching patients lose the battle against cancer and telling new patients they have it, I see grief every day. It doesn't look the same for everybody. I know this as surely as I know there isn't a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. So how is it that I never applied this knowledge to Autumn? Never stopped to consider it was her grief that kept her stoic when I was falling apart?
Autumn stares down into her coffee. "Despite knowing how impractical it would've been to start a family, I still envision what it would've been like. I picture crayon drawings held up by magnets on a fridge. Sticky fingerprints everywhere. Toys in cute, labeled containers."
A sad smile tugs up one corner of my mouth. "Do you think we could've been a family?"
That was our plan. Go off to college, come back and get married while Autumn followed me off to med school. Then fate took a different course, and right before we left for college everything blew up into a thousand unbearable pieces.
She shrugs despondently. "Maybe. But we were so young, Owen. We were terrified when that stick showed a plus sign. I know my mom has chilled out a lot now, but do you remember how strict she was? How desperately she wanted me to get out of Sedona? If we'd kept the baby, would you have made it down to Tucson for college? And through medical school? Through residency?" Her head shakes. "No way. I wouldn't have made it to Santa Clara, or anywhere else for that matter." She takes a deep breath. "And even with all that practicality, guilt still hangs over me like a little black cloud following me wherever I go. I know I made the right choice for me at the time, but the weight of the choice is sewn into me. It's stitched onto my DNA." She palms her chest. "And that's what I mean when I say the choice was mine."
I want to tell her that I think we could've done it, that even if our life looked completely different, it would've been the life we created. I don't say any of that though, because tears are escaping through her dark lashes and rolling down her face, mixing with rain. I pull her into me, tucking her into my chest.
"Despite all that, a part of me hates myself for going through with it. Do you hate me too?" Her voice is tiny, fearful.
My first instinct is to deny, to shield her from any more pain. But then I remember that last summer, when I didn't say how I felt, when I told her I supported what she thought was best. On the inside I begged and pleaded for her to say she wanted the baby we made; on the outside I stepped into the role of supportive boyfriend. I helped her make a choice, and then I resented her for it.
"I don't hate you anymore," I say into her hair. She slumps against me and my hand rubs across her back.
In fact, I'm pretty certain I