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So, I’m headed out of town, once again passing the greeting card store and the gas station, the dilapidated barn, and a stray cow with its head stuck under the barbed wire fence. I’m five miles out and feeling more uneasy by the second. What if I made the wrong decision? What if this could all be fixed with a conversation? What if leaving is the biggest regret of my life?
My foot comes off the pedal just as my exit onto the highway comes into view; I stutter stop and go before I flip a mental coin and take a sharp left. Screw jobs and deadlines. Screw questions without answers. Screw it all. I want answers now. As many as I can get.
I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all. Maybe there are a lot of reasons I should leave this town and get back to my life in Houston, but I drive in the opposite direction. I push the pedal harder in ten-second increments, wanting to arrive before my brain has the chance to catch up and tell me I’m making a mistake. I’m not an irrational person, never have been. Clearly, the rational side of my mind hasn’t yet comprehended the direction I’m headed.
Five minutes later, I arrive. The scene hasn’t changed a bit, it probably won’t no matter how much time passes. But it’s quiet now, and that makes everything different. There are no passing cars, no startling movements out of the corner of my eye, no rushing adrenaline except for the kind river-rafting through my veins from my own making.
I open the car door and slowly make my way to the porch, clutching my ball cap in both fists like it offers protection from whatever awaits. One step. Two steps. Three. Four. My foot wobbles on the last one, more because of nerves than obstacles in my way.
Nothing has changed, but everything has.
And now, I know with certainty that I want it to. Sometimes it takes attempting to leave a situation to realize how much you wish to remain in it.
I raise my hand and knock twice, firm and swift, no-nonsense and unapologetic. I’m here now, and I’m not leaving until we’ve had it out. The story ends now or later. Either way, it’s going to end once and for all.
Silence greets me, stretched long and thin.
And then I hear a noise. More noise than I should hear…coming from inside the house.
26
Years and years later, Summer, Present Day
Billi
To hear him tell it, Finn’s decision was made in a last-second panic, one that left him at a crossroads of then and now. That’s where most of life happens, isn’t it? In the split second between before and after, what could be and what might have been. And then you’re left with the questions. With the fallout of decisions made, both good and bad. Regret piled up on both sides of you, blessings in the front. The funny thing is, we spend most of our lives dwelling on the regret around us, not noticing that the blessings are stacked so much higher, right at eye level, where it’s easiest to see.
Blessings. That’s what life is made of. Too many to count. Sometimes it just takes longer to see them. Sometimes it takes swinging your car around and driving in the opposite direction of your plans.
“How are you doing?” I ask him, my hand on his lower back. His shirt is damp from sweat, the afternoon sun beating down mercilessly like it wants to punish everyone in its path. A couple decades ago, we might have deserved it. Today, I think the sun is just reminding us of its power to shine.
It’s spent more than two decades shining on both of us.
“Not great. Just remembering.”
“There’s a lot to unpack,” I say. “Thankfully, almost all of it is good.”
His shoulders rise and fall on a breath, and a drop of sweat drips from the salt and pepper hair at his collar. He turns to me with a sad smile. “Thankfully so. It could have gone the other way. I’m not sure where that would leave me if it had.”
“I’m not sure where it would leave either of us.”
He leans in to kiss my forehead, still the most intimate gesture despite two decades in our rearview mirror. My heart gives a thud inside my chest.
“You would probably still be sitting behind a motel desk,” he says, his lips hovering near my skin, “checking customers in and out for their questionable overnight stays. Either that, or you’d be a prosecuting attorney with a pile of victims in your back pocket.”
“Are you hypothetically accusing me of taking bribes?”
He laughs, warm breath feathering against my lashes, the first laugh I’ve heard in several days. I shiver from the delight of the sound. “I’m hypothetically accusing you of leaving people in tears.”
“You do remember I prosecute people for a living, right?”
“And I’ve seen them all cry. Nothing hypothetical about it.”
“Touché.” I smile into his chest, despite the heaviness of the situation.
“So, you admit you’re a master at reducing people to sobs?”
I shrug inside his arms. “I’m pretty good at everything.”
