At seventeen, I thought it sounded romantic.
It wasn’t the river’s fault. It wasn’t even Thomas’s fault. It was a seventeen-year-old girl’s impossible choice, made with the best math she had available, and it had cost both of us everything it could cost.
“It just took me thirty years,” I whispered to the view.
The river kept moving the way rivers do, indifferent and endless, and the afternoon light came down through the pines and sat on the water like something left there on purpose.
I stayed until the sun got low.
