Return To You

by Leia Stone

  "New to you. Not to me." I can’t believe this is the first time in these past few weeks she’s seen my tattoos.

  She nods. "Right." But her eyes don't leave my arms. "When did you get all that?"

  "Over the years. It started with you though." I rotate my arm to show her the bare tree, the red and orange leaves floating down to join the pile at the base. I still remember the day I got it—six months after our dorm room blowout, when I realized she was never going to talk to me again, when I knew we were over in her mind. I needed closure, I needed to know what we had was real.

  Her fingers lift, covering her lips, and a low, mangled sound comes from deep in her throat. "I had no idea you did that."

  "I wasn't in the best place. It was a couple months after the last time I saw you." I raise my eyes to find hers, forcing her to look at me directly. “Look, Autumn … I'm sorry. For everything I said to you. I didn't know it at the time, but I was grieving. It just came out as anger instead of sadness."

  She pushes her hair back from her face, then props her chin on her hand. "I understand."

  She's letting me off the hook too easily and I don't deserve it. This is her chance to hold me accountable, to remind me of what I said to her. You killed me too. It was a cruel thing to say. I was hurting, and I wanted her to hurt alongside me. I wanted to blame her for everything even though it was our choice. I never spoke up and said what I felt, so it was my choice too. Silence is a choice.

  Even though she's not asking for it, I keep explaining. "You left for college right after the abortion, and you just seemed so … composed. I felt like I was the only one who'd had their heart broken. I lashed out."

  Autumn flinches at the “A word” and her shoulders shake, just these tiny micro movements. "Maybe on the outside I didn't look like the picture of grief you expected me to be. I was in shock, I think. But on the inside, I was a mess. I took everything I was feeling and tucked it away. I promise you, everything you felt existed inside me too. It still does. Every day I live with the guilt of my choice, whether it was the right one to make or not."

  "We made that choice, Autumn. Not just you. We decided together that an abortion was the right choice for us."

  She shakes her head again. "That's where you're wrong. We might have made the choice, but I went through with it."

  "I was with you in that room when it happened. I was as involved as I could possibly be."

  She lifts one shoulder, dropping it back down, and when she looks up at me, I see so much malice in her gaze. This is her moment, the one she’s been waiting for, and I steel myself.

  "Until you screamed stop,” she seethes.

  Fuck. I’d forgotten that. I’d blocked out most of the procedure and focused more on the aftermath of what we did.

  “You started crying and…” I grab for words, fumbling as the memory of Autumn weeping during the procedure resurfaces.

  "You can't change your mind in the middle of a fucking procedure, Owen! Do you have any idea what that did to me?” Spittle flies from her mouth as her fist slams down on the table and I flinch. “It's been ten years and I can still hear you screaming 'Stop!' in my head. It broke me."

  My face must completely be drained of color, because I feel lightheaded and I can't keep my hands from shaking. "Fuck … Autumn. I'm so sorry. I was just a kid."

  Tears line the edges of her eyes and she sets her coffee on the table.

  "So was I, and I needed you to be strong. I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” She stands and the chair goes screeching backward, causing every gaze in the place to land on us.

  The guilt I feel right now is like a cavern opening in my chest. This whole time I’d been focused on how what I said in her dorm room at Santa Clara might have affected her, but I hadn't given any thought to the procedure.

  Autumn bursts out through the door to the coffee shop and I tear after her, heart pounding in my chest.

  I rush outside only to be pelted with rain and my gaze scans the parking lot for her mom’s car. “Autumn!” I shout when I spot her jogging to the small sedan.

  I run as fast as I can towards her and jump in front of her car door before she can drive away for another ten years. Everything is crystal clear now and I know exactly what I need to say, what she needs to hear to heal the wounds inside of her.

  “I only said stop that day because you were crying and I didn’t want them to hurt you. I fully supported your choice though.”

  There. I said it. I took the weight off of her feeling like she was the only one who made that choice. It’s a complete lie and I don’t care. I’ll do anything to see her never cry again. What’s done is done, there’s no going back, but I can try to heal whatever is broken inside of her.

  Rain falls onto her face, rolling down her cheeks so I can’t tell if she’s crying or not.

  She shakes her head in disbelief. “You can't fully understand, because it wasn't your body. If a man wants a woman to have an abortion, he's just a selfish asshole. If a woman wants an abortion, she’s a killer. That is what I live with every day."

  You killed me too. That day in 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 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.

  Oh, gee, I don't know, maybe when we hid in the shadows beside his dad’s house and he put his hands in my pants like we were teenagers again…

  My cheeks get hot, and it has nothing to do with the sun beating down on us.

  "He hugged me yesterday. I was upset. From talking about it all, you know?"

  "No,” she snaps. “I do not know. Because you have yet to trust me enough to tell me.”

  Whoa.

  My heart falls at her bold share session. My mom and I don’t usually go this deep. It’s work and bills and her health, but she doesn’t really dig into me like this.

  I stop and sigh, and my Mom stops too. She's about a foot away from me, and even though she's wearing a hat, she lifts her hand to the brim, giving herself just a few more inches of shade. “Honey, I’m your mother. You can tell me anything."

  I suddenly feel like I’m carrying a thousand-pound weight and it’s crushing me. Honestly, I'm sick of keeping the secret. Sick of being the only person who knows, of clinging to my choice and letting it define how I see myself. I've toiled over it for so long it feels like a part of me, but I feel better after talking to Owen and Livvie. Maybe I'll feel better if I tell my mom what really broke me and Owen. Maybe, if I start chipping away at the pieces of my secret, it won't be so heavy inside me anymore.

  "Would you really like to know what happened between me and Owen, Mom? Even if it makes you look at me differently?"

  She frowns. "Did you cheat on him?"

  "No." I swallow hard, preparing myself to tell my mother my darkest secret.

  "Did you fall in love with someone else while you were with him?"

  "Isn't that cheating?"

  "You can fall in love with someone and never touch them."

  I frown. "My answer is still no."

  "Did you learn his biggest secret and then blab it to the world?" It’s like she’s on Jeopardy trying to figure out an answer with rapid-fire speed.

  "No, Mom. Why are you trying to guess?"

  "So you don't have to say the words, because they obviously hurt." Sweat beads her brow and I wonder if I should ask her to sit on a rock or something before I drop the A-bomb.

  "That's sweet." I reach for her hand, pulling her to the side of the trail. "Normally I'd tell you to sit down, but there isn't anywhere to sit. Are you ready?"

  She nods but I can see the fear in her eyes.

  "The summer before we left for college, Owen and I got pregnant."

  My mom blinks rapidly, her mouth dropping open just enough to reveal the top of her bottom teeth.

  "We decided to get an abortion. Even though it was a choice we made together, we were both devastated, and the weight of it tore us apart."

  Did we decide together, or did I say I wanted one and Owen went along with it to be supportive? I always wondered that but I’m too scared to ever ask him.

  I study her face. She is being careful, I think, not to react too strongly. But I wonder if inside she is experiencing what I always feared she would feel: horror, disgust, soul-crushing disappointment. This is all compounded by the fact that she’s been going to church weekly now. I wonder if she’s already condemned me to hell.

  I steel myself, ready for it all, but it doesn't come. She takes me by surprise when she grabs my shoulders an
d pulls me in, hugging me into her thin body. "I'm sorry you went through that without me. I would've liked to have been there for you. I made mistakes, and I know why you didn't come to me … why you felt you couldn't."

  "Thank you," I whisper. My worst fear has evaporated. Just like that. And now I feel stupid for holding it in for so long.

  Mom keeps hugging me, and two sets of hikers pass us. She releases me, but not before she leans in and places a swift kiss on my forehead.

  "Are you ready to step into the vortex?" she asks, winking.

  "I think I already feel it," I answer.

  "I know you're kidding, but it is possible to feel it already. It's said energy vortexes can be felt as far as a quarter-mile away." She starts walking, and I follow.

  I wasn't kidding about the vortex. There is something different inside me right now. Maybe it's the spiritual energy source, infiltrating me and filling me with the buzzing feeling. Or maybe it's the fact that I no longer have to hide from my mom. When you keep a secret so big, it's like covering yourself in a sheer veil. Sure, she could see me, but there was something between us. Between me and the world. Not that I'm planning to staple a note with my confession to my forehead; the relief I feel from telling my mom might be all I need.

  We reach the creek and walk along, where my mom says the vortex is supposed to be felt the strongest. She pauses, placing one palm over her heart, and then a second palm over the first. She motions her head for me to do the same, and, unlike putting on my shoes before we arrived, this time I listen.

  We fall quiet, listening only to the soft sounds of gently flowing water and the occasional call of a bird.

  "Do you feel it, Autumn?" my mom asks. Her eyes are closed.

  My eyes are supposed to be closed too, but they're not. I’m watching her, taking in her peaceful expression, absorbing her stillness.

  All of a sudden, I’m hit with a weird feeling. A sense of impending doom. If cancer takes my beautiful mother from me, I’m not sure I will survive it. I only just got fully back into her life. I want thirty more years with her at least.