Winter's Regret

by Matt Sinclair

  Neither of us said anything for several seconds.

  "Never," she began, and paused. "Never, ever … suggest to me that Ellie was all your idea."

  I almost blurted something out, but the stop sign rose quickly.

  "I love that girl at least as much as you do." She paused. "At least!"

  Again, neither of us spoke for several seconds.

  "Knowing you the way I do," she continued, "I believe you thought saying what you said was a good thing. As usual, you have a way with words. It's often the wrong way, but it's your way."

  I looked at the floor, somewhat ashamed my wife knew me so well.

  I raised my head again. She had set her eyes on mine like a predator. "Do you feel unloved, Doug?"

  My body went numb. I couldn't feel my hands to raise them. To say stop. Ellie's smile came to mind.

  "No," I croaked.

  "Good." She wiped another tear off her cheek. "Because…" She paused. "I'll leave it at that."

  Her eyes softened. She raised a finger to my face and wiped away tears I hadn't felt.

  "Where's Ellie?" she asked.

  "With Jeb and his parents."

  She smiled. "I could use a bite to eat. Let's go somewhere nice."

  * * *

  The next morning, I awoke to the phone. "Hi, Doug. It's Bill from next door."

  "Bill?"

  "Jeb's dad."

  "Oh, Bill." I wiped my face. "Sorry, I just woke up."

  "Feeling better?"

  "A little, yeah," I said. "Is Ellie with you?"

  "Yes. She was barely awake when we got home, and when no one answered the door bell… Well, the kids had a little slumber party."

  "God, I'm sorry Bill. I must have totally zonked out." I felt Candace brush her leg against me.

  "Not a problem at all."

  "Still, thank you."

  "Ellie said you had promised to take her anywhere she wanted to go," he continued, "but if you're not up to it yet, we'd be happy to let her stay here for a while longer. They're both playing with their cars right now, anyway."

  Candace stretched beside me then got out of bed. "Coffee?" she whispered.

  I nodded.

  "Yeah, if she can stay there a little while longer, I need to pull myself together yet. I'll stop by in an hour or so."

  "She said something about wanting to dress up as a superhero, like her aunt and uncle. I didn't know what to make of that."

  "Well, I did say anything," I started to chuckle, and he joined in. "We'll see."

  I thanked him once more and we said our goodbye-for-nows.

  * * *

  "Coffee's almost ready," she said.

  "That was Bill." I leaned against a wall in the kitchen.

  "Ellie slept over at Jeb's?"

  I nodded.

  "I promised her when I left the fairgrounds that I'd do whatever she wanted with her today. Go anywhere she wanted to go."

  Candace smiled. "Okay. If she picks something fun, maybe I'll join you." She filled our coffee mugs

  "It may involve your sister."

  Her eyebrows rose. "Is there some costume party or something going on?"

  "Or something."

  She handed me my mug. "Sounds like a blast."

  One Way Out by M. Arthur Stone

  Shelby Cooper stared out her car window into black nothingness and bit down on her lower lip. Cold had started seeping into her bones, though she thought that was more from the terror she felt would consume her at any moment. She knew what she had to do, but couldn't get her body to obey the screaming inside her head. Move! Do it! Now!

  She tore her gaze from the window to the passenger seat where her two-and-half-year-old son, James, was standing and staring out his own window. Normally, she'd never let him out of his car seat in the back until they got where they were going, but right now the car wasn't going anywhere. And anyway, this would be easier for her to do if he was in the front seat with her.

  "Oooh! Tumbody turned off yights!" he said, in awe of the total darkness that surrounded them. "Mommy, turn yights bat on," he pleaded.

  James didn't like the dark. Unless he was thoroughly exhausted and half passed out, she could never put him down in his crib with the lights off. In truth, she could rarely get him to go to sleep in his crib at all. Most nights she had to let him lay on the love seat in the living room—what James called the 'yittle towch'—with her Kindle tablet playing games until he passed out. Once asleep, she could move him easily to his crib without waking him. She often wondered if, when he woke up in the morning, he wondered just how the hell he'd ended up in his own bed.

  This thought made her hiccup a tiny laugh, one that almost pushed her into hysteria. She stifled it with a gasp of terror as she thought about what she had to do before she could get out of this car and go home. She looked down at her trembling hands and the black plastic garbage bag she was holding. Shelby could feel the pressure building, as if at any moment the car would implode all around her. She really wished Nathan, her husband, were with her.

  Nathan never panicked, never choked during stressful moments. He didn't worry. He didn't second guess himself. He recognized what had to be done and he acted. If he were here, he'd take charge of the situation without even asking her if she needed him to. He'd rip the bag out of her hands, snap it open, slip it over their son's head, and tie it around his neck without even thinking.

  Shelby's problem was that she thought too much. Right now she was thinking about what she would tell her husband if she chickened out. What could she say? Honey I tried, I really did. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

  Nathan wouldn't care, he'd still be enraged. Would he hit her? No. She knew he wouldn't. He'd hit the walls, throw things, and break every last thing in the house that wasn't nailed down, but he'd never hit her.

  Time was almost up. The only working light in the car was from the screen of her brand new iPhone 5 sitting on the dashboard, but she knew the phone would be dead in less than a minute.

  I have less than a minute, she thought.

  Shelby bit down harder on her lip until she drew blood. The pain seemed to unlock her muscles and she was able to move again. She pinched the black plastic and wiggled her thumb and forefinger until the two flaps shifted and she was able to open the bag.

  Now or never, she thought. She had to do it now or she could kiss her life goodbye. Because, she would never be able to live with herself if she didn't go through with this. She knew that as sure as she knew how to breathe. Determined, she turned and looked at James again.

  "James?" she asked, her voice steadying.

  "Yes, Mommy?" He looked at her.

  "Are you scared?"

  He nodded slowly, his mouth turned down and his eyes looking up at her. He whimpered a soft "Mm-hm."

  Shelby knew his fear would continue to build until he started to whine and then cry. She couldn't let that happen or she'd never be able to pull this off. She had an idea.

  "Do you want to hide?"

  He looked at her confused, then his mouth upturned a bit. "Hide?"

  "Yeah. Do you want to play hide from Mommy?" She held up the bag and shook it playfully. "If you hide in this bag, Mommy won't be able to see you."

  He smiled. "Otay!"

  She draped the bag over his head and closed it loosely around his shoulders, so he had plenty of air. Then she pretended to gasp. "Oh my goodness! Where did James go?"

  From inside the bag, she heard her only son's muffled giggle. She called out "Marco!"

  "Poyo!" James called from inside the bag.

  Shelby pulled James close to her and cinched the bag tight around his neck and tied the flaps into a knot. James, feeling the change in the game, instinctively grabbed at the plastic pressing on his neck. She called out "Marco" again, but this time James whimpered, getting scared. It was okay if he started struggling or thrashing now. The hard part was over. He'd never be able to get the bag off.

  She let her son go momentarily as s
he wrenched open the glove box and pulled out the emergency hammer she'd bought on eBay for five dollars almost three years ago, never thinking she'd ever actually use it. It had a pointed steel face and a razor in the handle to cut through nylon and polyester seat belts. She reached out and grabbed her son by the collar of his sweatshirt with her left hand and pulled him to her. He tensed his body away from her and screamed inside the bag.

  "Oh Jesus! Dear God, help me," Shelby screamed as she swung the emergency hammer in her right hand with every bit of strength she could muster.

  The hammer struck the passenger side window. The glass cracked and split, but didn't break. She reared back to swing again but then heard a soft, high-pitched groan as the water level rose up to and over the window. An instant later, shattered glass and ice water rushed into the car with a roar.

  Shelby gasped in shock as the water, which had reached her waist as she was tying the bag over James' head, now shot up to her chin. She mentally slapped herself and breathed in as deep a breath as she could take in just before the water completely submerged them both.

  James started to thrash in reaction to being underwater, but Shelby's left arm was locked around him like a vise.

  Blind now, she scooched her body, nearly weightless, over to the passenger seat. She let the emergency hammer fall to the car floor and used her free right hand to feel for the opening of the open window. She guided herself through the opening and pulled James easily after her.

  She felt the toes of her New Balance trainers rub along the inside of the car door. She bent her knees and planted both heels on the ledge of the car window. She pushed with everything she had up towards the surface, and then kicked with her legs like she had learned back in high school.

  She kicked for what seemed like several minutes but couldn't have been more than three or four seconds. The river under the bridge where her car had been forced off by the drunk driver moments before couldn't have been more than thirty or forty feet deep.

  She finally broke the surface and sucked in sweet air. She lifted James up out of the water and bent a knee up to steady him on. She grabbed the plastic bag and clawed through it, breaking two of her fingernails. The second the plastic split open, James' hysterical scream split the still night like a siren. It was sweetest sound Shelby Cooper had ever heard.

  When Stars Align by A.T. O'Connor

  The letters arrived on the same day. One paved the way for my future. The other, my demise. Both invoked the same memory.

  The party swirled around behind me; laughter, lights, the pungent sting of beer overflowing from plastic glasses. And under it all, the sweet scent of pot, which was why I was leaving.

  "Name's Adam." He leaned with his back against the door frame between the kitchen and the laundry room. His husky voice and lanky form sidetracked my beeline for the door.

  I'd spent the evening staring at his backside whenever it wavered into view through the sheer volume of partiers at Doug's Landing. I'd been roped into attending September Slam by my best friend. She'd promptly dumped me at the biggest college party of the fall in favor of hanging out in the bowels of the renowned party house with cooler peeps than me. Counting cute rear-ends passed the time. That, and dreaming about which college acceptance letter I would get in the mail first.

  But now that the party had moved past typical drinking and into drug use, it was my time to go. You see, nothing about my straight-A, straight-laced, senior-in-high-school self was cool. I was too focused on my future to ruin it in exchange for a few fun nights. That must have been obvious to everyone except Adam, who seemingly missed the memo to ignore my very presence.

  "Be," I said, cringing at the longing in my voice.

  Adam seemed not to notice and ran his fingers through his shaggy hair. A slow grin spread across his face. "Be what?"

  I wanted to bang my head into the wall, or rather into his muscular chest, which strained against his thin white t-shirt. Anything to knock some sense into me. I wasn't supposed to think about things like rippling pectorals and callipygian buns. I was meant for bigger things than letting my amygdala drool unchecked—like saving the world. With difficulty, I swallowed past the hot coal in my throat. "My name. It's Be."

  "As in Beautiful?"

  As if. Nobody had ever called me beautiful. Not even my mom. At nearly six feet tall, I could never be described in such fun, peppy words. I was huge. Tall. An Amazon. A copper-haired goliath among the petite blondes. Never cute. Certainly never beautiful.

  But I was smart. Smart enough to know that Adam's interest in me had nothing to do with my looks or my name. In his eyes, I was an unattached geek looking to worship the educated gods of Western's college freshman. I decided to quash his one-night-stand plans before he said something he might later regret. "As in Elzbieta."

  He let out a low whistle, and I braced myself for the punch line. Instead, he surprised me. "My grandma's name was Elzbieta. I wish more people would keep up the tradition and name their kids after family."

  Four. Nine. Sixteen. Twenty-five. Twenty-five...

  For the life of me I couldn't remember what came next. My stand-by stress reliever of counting square numbers had failed. Some instinct beyond logic kicked in, likely located in my amygdala. I stared into his mocha-colored eyes and blinked twice, hoping it looked more alluring than it felt. It wasn't often guys who talked to me matched my height. The taller ones seemed to go after the pocket-sized girls, while everyone else was chest high. The shorter ones never seemed inclined to raise their eyes above my c-cup.

  "So, who are you named after?"

  Again, that lazy smile stretched across Adam's face. "A little-known guy from someplace called Eden."

  I laughed. I couldn't help myself. "Direct descendent?" I asked.

  He spoke with easy-going earnestness. "We all are."

  I didn't necessarily agree nor disagree. I'd been raised by good Christian parents with the roots of faith going deep. Yet, somewhere between the blind faith of my childhood and my growing dislike for my congregation's prejudice toward the more controversial topics of the day I started to question the motives behind the messages.

  I was spiritual, but I just wasn't sure if I was religious. Not that it mattered. A kegger certainly wasn't the place for such discussions. Or so I thought.

  Adam had other things in mind. Before I could sidle past him to free myself from the debauchery within, he snagged my arm and pulled me into the laundry room, shutting the door behind us.

  Now, even the cleanest laundry room isn't the most romantic setting in the world, and the laundry room of a college party house is a definite mood killer. But somehow, being stuck in the small space with Adam proved cozy. Cozier than it should have been.

  He swept his arm across the top of the appliances and a cascade of dirty clothes tumbled to the floor. He even managed to rustle up some chlorine wipes to disinfect the chipped white enamel. When he was done "cleaning," he hopped onto the washer and patted the dryer for me to follow suit.

  Against my better judgment, I did. Everything about my situation should have been wrong, yet for some reason, it felt right. Or maybe I was just tired of being the geeky Amazon whom everyone passed over for my cuter compadres. It felt nice to be the center of someone's universe for a change. Even if that universe smelled like sweaty gym socks.

  We literally talked all night.

  For once I'd found an intellectual match. No matter what topic came up, Adam had something to say—and not just a typical guy's rambling, bigoted, sports-minded opinion. Adam actually knew about things and was passionate about them. By the end of the night, I learned he was far more than a handsome face and a tight behind.

  And yes, we eventually got around to that. But not until morning. Not until we left the safety of the laundry room to find drunken idiots passed out like wounded warriors in nearly every space of the house. I gathered Liz and dumped her off at home. Adam did the same with his buddies.

  Coffee and omelets followed at a twenty-f
our hour road side diner.

  Then came a walk on the beach.

  Looking back, I blame the September chill for my predicament with the two letters.

  There's something about a deserted beach, cold weather and a night's worth of passionate conversation that pushes all rational thoughts away. He wanted me, and I wanted him. We believed in the same things. Not to mention, he attended the U, my first pick college. It was like God had lined up that night just for us. Adam was everything I'd ever dreamed of, and he was mine—all mine—for that one moment in time.

  It was the first time I felt beautiful on the inside and the outside. For the first time ever, I'd thrown caution to the wind. Not in a stupid way, mind you. We used a condom. Besides, Adam said he'd never had a serious girlfriend, and I'd never even dated.

  No, what I had done was to let go of all my uptight, regimented rules and experienced the spontaneous gifts life had to offer. On the beach, in Adam's arms, I felt both powerful and powerless—another first for me. Maybe everyone else was right. Maybe I was too motivated, too focused, and too mature for a girl my age.

  They never knew what happened that night, though everyone thought the change in me was lovely. Mom's word, not mine. Somehow, I doubt she would have approved of me going on the birth control pill as a result of it.

  September turned to October, and November waned to winter snow and Christmas break.

  Adam was with me when I tore into the first letter.

  My excitement erupted into the chilled holiday air. "I got accepted to the U!"

  "I knew you would," he said, wrapping his arms around me and kissing me hard. "I love you, Be. Now we'll be together."

  Remembering that first night at Doug's Landing, my heart swelled. God, karma, serendipity, coincidence. Call it what you will. The stars had aligned that night.

  I opened the second letter.

  "Dear Miss Green. We regret to inform you that your blood donation could not be used for the following reasons."

  One box was checked.