I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window. Violet was lucky. Her shop was at the end of a cute little strip mall designed to look like a bunch of log cabins strung together. She had windows on the front and along one side. Our table faced one of the side windows that overlooked the park across the street. We’d taken our prom pictures in the white gazebo sitting in the center of the park. Similar baskets of flowers were hanging from the hooks that lined the outside of the gazebo, and the rose bushes were in bloom, just like that day. Prom was this time of year. Maybe that was why I kept thinking about it. Or, you know, the fact that my date from back then was sitting right across from me. We’d taken the pictures, and then later when we were alone Luke had proposed to me. He had said he would love me forever, and back then I had no doubt that he would.

I struggled with what I should even say to him. What would possibly make him understand how much he had hurt me? “I tried to let you know about Dylan, so many times, Luke. I wrote letters, dozens of letters and you sent them all back. I still have them somewhere at home in a box. I kept writing to you for a while after he was born, and you sent those back too. They’re in the same box.” I was beginning to realize that I had put a lot of things in a box. Memories, hurt feelings, fears, grief, sorrow—I had stuffed it all inside a box and shoved it into the recesses of my heart. It was about to burst open, and I didn’t want it to happen right now or maybe not ever, so I stopped trying to explain.

“Can I read them?” he asked tentatively. His crossed arms rested on top of the table. I could see pine trees, a forest full of them tattooed on one; on top—it looked like his backyard, a piece of home inked on his arm.

My eyes drifted up to find him leaning toward me. Studying me. “Maybe, someday,” I finally answered. I wasn’t ready for him to read the feelings of pain and love and hope I’d poured into those letters and I might not ever be. “You would have come back for Dylan because I was pregnant. Why wasn’t I enough, Luke?” I blurted. I had to know.

He shook his head with a determined expression on his face. “That’s not what I meant. You were pregnant. You needed me. You didn’t need some crazy asshole who almost killed you, but you did need the father of your baby to stand by your side. Maybe that would have sunk in and pulled me through faster.”

I looked away from him, back out the window.