"We were going to paint the nursery yellow. You wanted blue but I said yellow because it worked for either." The words werepouring out now, three years of grief I'd never let myself speak. "You wanted to wait another year but I said I was ready. And we were trying. You'd come home from work and find me looking at nursery furniture online."
Matt made a sound like something had broken inside him.
"And then you slept with Angela and all of it died." I looked at him through the rain. "That future, those kids, everything we'd built. It all just died."
"I know." His voice was barely audible. "I know what I took from us."
"Do you?" I stepped closer. "Do you know what it's been like? Seeing you around town, knowing what we lost? Watching your mother get worse and knowing that if we'd stayed together, I'd be there with you? That I'd be holding your hand through this?"
"Yes." He was crying now too. "I think about it every day. What you'd say, how you'd help, what it would feel like to not do this alone." He wiped his face with his hand but the rain kept coming. "I think about Sophie and James. What they'd look like. Whether Sophie would have your eyes, whether James would've been quiet like me or stubborn like you."
Something in my chest released.
"I'm so angry at you," I said. "For what you did. For what we lost."
"You should be."
"But I'm tired of carrying it." I took a breath, felt the rain on my face, the cold seeping into my bones. "I forgive you, Matt."
He went completely still.
"I forgive you," I said again. "Not because what you did was okay, and not because it doesn't matter. But because I can't keep holding onto it. Because it's killing both of us."
Matt's shoulders shook. He covered his face with his hands and just stood there, breaking apart in the rain.
I closed the distance between us and pulled him into my arms.
He folded into me, his whole body shaking with sobs he'd probably been holding back for years. I held him while he cried, while the storm poured down around us, while everything we'd been carrying finally came loose.
"I'm sorry," he said against my shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
"I know."
"I would take it back. All of it. I'd do anything?—"
"I know you would." I pulled back enough to see his face. "But we can't go back. We can't."
He nodded slowly, understanding settling into his features.
"Sophie and James," he said quietly. "They would've been beautiful."
"Yeah. They would've."
"I'm sorry they'll never exist."
"Me too."
We stood there for a moment, mourning those ghost children together. The future that had died. The life we'd planned and lost.
"You're going to be okay," I said finally. "You and your mom and your dad. You're going to get through this."
"Yeah." He took a shaky breath. "And you're going to be happy. With Caleb. You deserve that."
"I am happy."
"Good." He meant it. I could see it in his eyes. "That's good."
The rain had softened to a steady patter. The storm was passing, leaving everything clean and new in its wake.
