“Do you have time for coffee?”
My ex, the father of my child stood beside a grocery cart, smiling uncertainly.
“Do you have time for coffee?”
I looked at his left hand before answering. He noticed.
“No wife,” he said. “You?”
He pushed the larger half of his sandwich toward me.
“No husband.”
He pushed the larger half of his sandwich toward me, just as he had outside the diner.
“You remember,” I said.
“Of course I remember.”
Coffee became dinner the following week.
I stayed until they stacked the chairs.
Coffee became dinner the following week.
Over dessert, he reached across the table. “I’m sorry, Dorothy. I should’ve fought harder to stay with you.”
My mother had told me he knew about the pregnancy.
“I should’ve fought harder to stay with you.”
I heard a father apologizing for abandoning his child; he was apologizing for our breakup.
Neither of us said enough to discover the difference.
“I can’t go through those months again,” I whispered.
“We don’t have to.”
He held my hand.
“Can we start here?”
He held my hand. “I’d like that.”
We’d been seventeen, I reminded myself. We’d both been frightened. I could forgive the boy he’d been without telling the man what had happened to our baby.
