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 still love you.
Chapter 13
Autumn
"I didn't take you for a hippie." My mom grins, laughing at her own joke. She's carrying a walking stick and wearing a necklace with a large purple crystal pendant.
"I didn't know you were into energy work," I shoot back, bending over and lacing up my tennis shoes. I'm still sitting in the car. Mom's standing beside it, impatiently waiting. To be fair, she did tell me to put on my shoes before we got to the trail. I didn't listen.
"I'll take all the help I can get," Mom says, scuffing her toe in the dirt. A little puff of reddish-brown wafts through the air.
"All set." I stand up and reach back into the car for my water bottle and hat. Pushing the hat down over my head, I start for the trailhead, my mom in step beside me.
We make it roughly five minutes before she asks about Owen: "Are you going to keep telling me coffee yesterday was fine?"
I sneak a glance at her. She looks okay enough for this hike. It's not strenuous and I’m actually surprised at how well she’s doing with the chemo. We're here for the vortex. Supposedly it has healing powers, or some New Age mumbo jumbo like that. I grew up here and never felt the subtle energy people come here to find. I've heard people talk about feeling a tingling in their hands, a rush of energy, or a buzzing throughout the body. Personally, I think it's all in the mind. If a person wants to feel something, they will.
But when my mom asked me to accompany her on an energy vortex hike, there was no way I was saying no. I’d just hoped Owen wouldn't be a topic of conversation.
"Coffee really was fine, Mom."
It was both heartbreaking and a giant relief to finally say those things to Owen. He held me in the rain and then we both had to go. And now I don’t know where we stand. It was painfully awkward considering our little driveway finger-banging session a few nights ago. This whole thing with him is ass backwards and I don’t know what to do about it.
“Mmm hmm. And what was it besides fine?” This time she accompanies the word with air quotes and an eye roll. For a second I’m stunned, but I recover quickly. I’m still getting used to this relaxed, sarcastic version of my mother. This is not the person I grew up with. She used to tell me sarcasm was a poor man’s wit.
“He apologized, for one.”
“What did he have to apologize for?”
I shoot her a look. I know she’s curious, but damn I’m not sure I’m ready to tell her.
“Fine,” she says, drawing out the word and giving me a look that shows how pleased she is to be turning the table and using that word on me.
“He has tattoos,” I tell her, hoping this tidbit will be enough to quench her thirst for answers.
“I’ve seen them,” she answers.
“Did you know one of them is for me?”
“The tree?”
I nod.
“I noticed it, but I never asked. I figured it was for you, with the fall colors and the leaves falling off the branches. If his ink was a poem, it would be titled Autumn Left or something dramatic like that.” She barely manages to conceal a smile. “Or maybe it would be called Autumn Right.”
"You're full of jokes, huh?" This new Faith Cummings is weird to me, but I like it.
She shrugs. "I'm always good for a dad joke."
She had to be my mom and dad, so that makes sense.
We get a little further on the trail and Mom stops to take a drink. "Did he touch you?" she asks, her water bottle poised at her mouth.
My eyes bulge. Did he touch you? isn’t exactly something you want to hear come out of your mother’s mouth.
"Yesterday?" I ask, trying to calm my racing thoughts.
She scrunches her eyes as she drinks. "When else?" she asks after she swallows.