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It’s winter, and the Boston sky is gray and wide, the air sharp as glass. All along the quiet, tree-lined street, the houses are wreathed in Christmas lights - even April has some that Jackson helped her string around the roof of the front porch.
She used to love this time of year, and she still tries to - she sings carols and makes mulled wine that’s too heavy with cloves and takes Harriet to pick out a tree. But all the time there’s this sadness deep within her, like an ache of hunger that never goes away.
She wonders, sometimes, whether Jackson is thinking about the same thing she is; there are moments, in the quiet spaces, when she catches his eye and there’s something faraway and familiar in his expression, that she almost asks him.
But things have been so good, so easy lately, in this new life of theirs. She can almost - when he smiles and calls them the girls, when she lets a hand drop to his arm saying goodbye, when he reaches out without thinking to brush a thread of hair back from her face - imagine going back to the way they were before. And she doesn’t want to lose that, wants to keep that feeling safe, as though trying to prevent a ripple across a still surface of water.
So, she doesn’t say anything, and she leaves the past to rest.
On the day, she goes to church in the morning, early, when she knows no one will be there.
The day. She’s never really known what to call it, the day Samuel was born and the day he died. It’s like what happened to them - they were parents and they weren’t. There isn’t a word that can hold all that.
When she gets to the church, it’s empty but for the custodian carefully scraping ice from the front steps; she smiles at him as she passes, and he raises a hand to his forehead in a kind of salute.
Inside, she lights a candle and cups her hands around the flame as it gutters and steadies itself. For a long time she just stands there, trying to draw some kind of solace, some kind of peace, from the warm, flickering light, and then finally she steps away, slips into the front pew.
Rows, Jackson had called them once, and she remembers smiling, correcting him. He’d just laughed, shaken his head. Pews, he’d said. Got it. She’d been pregnant then, talking about taking the baby to church. She thinks of his arm around her, his thumb tracing a line back and forth against her bare skin; that moment when it all seemed like it just might be that easy.
She draws in a long, deep breath, and whispers a prayer into the stillness.
On her way out of the church, she stops at the sight of what she thinks is a sleeping bag, spread out across a bench nearby. Just as she’s about to step closer, the dark shape stirs and separates - it’s a young couple in thick coats, curled into an embrace, and there’s something so sad and so hopeful about the way they cling to each other that she lingers for a second just to watch them, before she ducks her head and hurries away.
It doesn’t really hit her until the evening, when the sky is faded lilac and swirling with snow.
She’s buying groceries on her way home from work, and as she takes down a box of washing powder from the shelf, she remembers: a store in Seattle just like this one, lights glowing against the misted windows and Dean Martin playing soft and tinny on the radio. She remembers she was crying - weeping, really - thick, hot tears that streamed down her cheeks and neck and soaked into the collar of her shirt, remembers Jackson’s hand on her arm and the murmur of his voice against her hair, and the other Christmas shoppers skirting carefully around them, eyes turned away - out of pity, maybe, or kindness, or just the fear that that kind of grief might be catching, if they got too close.
She doesn’t cry like that, not any more, but still for a moment the pain is strong enough to take her breath away, a feeling like something crawling its way out of her chest.
She leaves the washing powder behind and stumbles outside, salt on the sidewalk crunching beneath her feet, and she calls him before she’s even really realized what she’s doing.
“You want to come over for dinner tonight?” she asks when he picks up. Usually, Fridays are his nights, and they’ve been careful about sticking to that - or, at least, they were at first.
“Of course,” he says. He hesitates. “I - are you okay?”
She breathes out, shakily. “I’m okay.”
She realizes that since the year they lost Samuel, they’ve never spent this day together, and the thought is enough to break her heart.
Later, when she answers the door to find him standing there, she feels a calm settle over her for the first time all day. He’s squinting in the front porch light, tiny crystals of ice clinging to his dark coat.
“I thought you told me it never really snows in Boston any more?” she says, and he smiles, lifts his shoulders in a shrug.
“I had to convince you somehow.”
He looks at her for a moment, a long, even look, and just as it seems like he’s about to say something more, they hear Harriet’s voice calling, “Daddy! Daddy!” from the stairs.
April laughs. “I think you’re being summoned,” she says, pulling back the door so he can step inside.
In the hallway, Jackson swings Harriet up into his arms and brushes his cold nose against her cheek to make her squeal. They turn back to April, both smiling, and he’s still looking at her the way he was before, like he’s searching her face for something lost there.
It’s Jackson who speaks about Samuel first.
They put Harriet to bed, lingering a few extra minutes in the doorway to count her slow, steady breaths, and then they head back down the stairs, to the warm light spilling from the kitchen. April makes tea and Jackson stays; it’s still snowing outside, thick and heavy by now.
“You know,” he says, “I was thinking today that I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve talked about Samuel, the last few years. Said his name, even.” The suddenness of it takes April by surprise and she isn’t sure why; she understands, now, that she’s been waiting all day for them to talk about him. “I think about him,” Jackson goes on, his voice soft, even. “I think about him all the time. But talking about it - ”
He shakes his head, lets the words trail away.
“I know,” she answers. She can feel the sting of tears in her eyes, at the back of her throat. “I think about him all the time, too - what he would look like, what his voice would sound like. Whether he’d be more like you, more like me.”
She closes her eyes and she can almost see him, the baby she held, tiny and feather-light, and a little boy with dark curls.
Jackson nods, and his mouth twists, almost into a smile, like it does when he’s trying not to cry. “I think about how he would’ve been with Harriet.” He pauses a moment. “I think about what would have happened with us.”
She blinks and the tears spill, and she wipes her cheeks with the flats of her hands. “It still feels so unfair.” The words come out almost as a whisper. “I know that God doesn’t give us all the answers, I know that they aren’t mine to have, and I try so hard to accept that.” She falters - it’s been a long time since she’s confessed to this out loud. “But sometimes I don’t think I can.”
“I know,” he says, then corrects himself. “Or, I mean, I don’t, but I get it. You want it to mean something.”
“I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do, the last five years - when I went to Jordan, and at the clinic in Washington, and here. Trying to find some kind of meaning in it.” She shakes her head. “We lost so much, I just, I felt like the only way I could get through it was by believing that God put me on this path for a reason.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, looks down at his hands, spread flat on the table. “I used to think the best way to get through it was just to keep going. Like if I didn’t talk about what happened and just kept going through the motions, pretending to be okay, pretending I was moving forward, eventually I would be.” He smiles, but there’s a sharp edge to it. “That worked out great.”
He looks at her across the table, eyes burning, and the past lies between them like an unhealed wound.
“You said something,” she says, finally, “the night of the storm, when you showed up at my house. You said you understood now why I left. Did you mean it?”
He looks surprised. “I meant it.”
She hesitates. The thought’s been in her mind for so long, and she’s afraid to put it into words and afraid that if she doesn’t now, she never will.
“Would it have made a difference to you - to us - if I’d said that I was sorry? Really said it, I mean.”
“April,” he says. He shakes his head. “I was so angry back then - at you, at everything. All the time. I don’t know if I would even have heard it.”
But something in the way he looks at her makes her think he might have.
She draws in a breath, and she thinks of sobbing in the nursery that was never going to be used, and the taste of blood from her bitten-down lips, and the nights she would dream of a baby crying, dream of herself running from room to room, looking for him, and how the silence when she woke was the loudest thing she’d ever heard. (It was never quiet at the camp in Jordan, the air always humming with sound, engines running and fans whirring, and the first night there she’d sat on her cot and wept with relief.)
“I needed to go,” she says, steadily, “because everything in Seattle reminded me of Samuel. Our apartment. The hospital. The patients - children, parents.” There are tears tracking down her cheeks and this time she doesn’t bother wiping them away. “You.” She says the last thing softly, like maybe that will make it hurt less. “I needed to go, but I know how much I hurt you. I didn’t want to face it for the longest time, but I know that I did and I’m sorry.”
“I meant what I said,” he answers, and there’s none of the old bitterness in his face now. “I understand. We were grieving, we both made mistakes. I know I did. With everything - the divorce, everything that happened after.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wanted to try and I just… gave up.” He makes a slight, helpless gesture with one hand, as though trying to grasp at something just beyond his reach. “I was a mess after Samuel, after you left, and I couldn’t feel like that any more. I just needed it to be over, and I was so hurt and resentful that it was like I didn’t care what it did to you, or if it was even what I wanted.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Jackson - ” she says, but he keeps on as if he didn’t hear her, as if now the words have started, there’s no way for them to stop.
“I’m sorry about Montana, too.”
Instinctively, she brings a hand to her chest and she can feel her heart like a trapped moth, fluttering against her ribs. She thinks of his smile in the darkened hallway, of cool, white hotel sheets and her fingers tracing circles against his shoulder. It’s been years, and she still doesn’t know what he was thinking.
“What did happen,” she asks, and there’s a little fracture in her voice, “with Montana?”
He hesitates, and his jaw tightens. “I was scared,” he says, simply, and there’s that bitter smile again. “That’s what happened. We were right on the edge of something and I just - couldn’t get past myself long enough to see it.”
“You never said anything to me,” she says. “I thought you were happy, I thought it was what you wanted. And then - ”
She still remembers the feeling, the drop in her belly, like missing a step.
“I was happy.” He holds her gaze, and his eyes are bright, lashes wet. “I never stopped loving you, I never stopped wanting you, I just… I was afraid. I was afraid it wouldn’t work out and we’d make each other miserable, I was afraid I was always going to need you more than you needed me, I was afraid of getting hurt.” He lets out a long breath. “I was… I was a coward. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve to have me take my crap out on you.”
Gently, she shakes her head. She remembers something else he said, the night of the storm, and she thinks that maybe, after all this time, she can try to understand. Maybe they were both just doing what they needed to do to survive.
She reaches slowly out across the table to take his hand. His hands are always warm, she thinks, or maybe hers are cold.
“I guess we really screwed up,” she says, and she smiles, blinks back tears. He pulls closer, leaning in to smooth her hair back from her forehead.
“I screwed up,” he says. “If I’d figured this out years ago...”
She looks up, meets his eyes, and she wonders if she’s ready yet to let the past leave her, watch it unfurl like a flag and let it go. He tightens his grip on her hand, fingers curling into her palm.
Finally - “You never stopped loving me?” she repeats, softly.
He shakes his head and he looks at her, unguarded, the way he used to do when they were young. “No.”
She’s close enough now that her forehead almost rests against his, and his thumb traces the curve of her wet cheek.
He smiles, then. It’s always been the same.
She musters all of her courage, lifts her hands to slide them onto his shoulders. Maybe they’ve been cowards and runaways, but she doesn’t think that’s who they are any more.
So she kisses him, like it’s the easiest thing she’s ever done, and it’s an ending and a beginning too, like they’re back in the hotel bar in San Francisco, like they’re standing in the dark, and the road is rolling out ahead of them.