Your Fault

Sydney made a mistake eight months ago. They both did. And if they hadn’t, the sequence of events that followed wouldn’t have led him to three rows from the front in borrowed dress clothes.

He was taking her to a doctor’s appointment. They had the music turned up and the windows rolled down. She was laughing, both hands clutching her hair to keep it from whipping around her face. She wasn’t looking out of the window or looking at the buildings they were passing. It was him she saw, not the pick up truck that sped through the red light.

“It’s not your fault,” his father kept saying.

“It’s not your fault,” his mother kept saying.

But he remembered December and the things they did. And he remembered Sage yelling at the hospital, “Save my baby! Save my baby!” He couldn’t hear Allison from where the nurses held him down, trying to stop the bleeding, but he was sure she was saying the same thing.

“This is your fault,” he could hear her mother say.

“This is your fault,” he could hear her father say.

“This is your fault,” he could hear her brothers say.

“This is your fault,” he could hear the baby say.

“I know,” he wanted to tell them.

He didn’t. Instead, he watched her older brothers, her father, and her uncle stand up to take their places around the casket as the baby started to cry in the front row.

Sydney hadn't held him yet.