No Regrets

“I told you, I am completely comfortable with all of the choices I made in my life!” Jillian said, defensively.

“All of them?”

“You keep asking me that!  I told you!  I don’t have any regrets.”

“You’d change nothing?”

“That question is getting extremely annoying.”  She thought of her daughter, at home, studying diligently for her math final and of her son, who is volunteering tonight at the wheelchair basketball event.  “I love my husband, I love my twins.  What could I change?”

His stare stripped her of the lie.  He knew.  She could tell.

“Twins?”

“It was years ago,” Jillian whispered. 

“You can go back.  You can undo what you did.”

Before she could respond, she found herself back in the woods.  It was just how she remembered it.  The icy frost hung in the darkness tormenting the leafless branches.  The small shape rocked under a large oak tree.  The melodic sobs marred the white noise created by the wind.

“Hello?” Jillian called, keeping her distance.

As Jillian approached, she realized it was a girl approximately five years old, the same age as her son.

“Are you okay?” As Jillian placed a hand on the girl’s arm, she watched her wince in agony.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.  Are you alright?”

“He hurt me bad this time.  Momma said to run and never stop, but my feet stopped working.”

“What’s your name?” Jillian asked as she looked at the little girl’s swollen ankle.

“Brittany.”

“Here, put this on.” Jillian handed Brittany her coat, noticing the child was wearing nothing but a tee-shirt in the frigid January night air.

Jillian thought of her five year old son sleeping at home as he often did while she took her nightly stroll out in the backyard.  This had been her routine since her husband’s tragic car accident 3 years earlier.

“Who hurt you,” she asked, sitting next to the little girl.

“Momma’s friend.  Usually he only hurts me a little.  But this time he hurt me a lot.  He had the special drink that makes him angry and I knocked it over.  He didn’t have no more and he was real thirsty.  I guess he don’t like water much.”

Jillian tried to think of something to say.

“He said he’ll find me and kill me dead.  If he does, will you take care of Floppy for me?” Brittany held up a stuffed rabbit that looked at one time to have been pink.

Before Jillian could respond, she heard a voice.  “Damn kid!  Get over here so I can finish you off!”

Brittany looked fearfully at Jillian. 

“Take Floppy!”

As Brittany thrust her bunny at Jillian, the voice got closer.  Jillian instinctively picked up Brittany and Floppy and began to run.  The weight of the child, and the fact that Jillian was never much of an athlete resulted in the footsteps behind her growing closer.
Jillian fell to the ground with a figure that smelled like cheap gin on top of her.  Before she could breathe, Brittany was ripped from her hands.  She watched from the muddy ground as he began to pummel the little girl with a fallen branch from a tree. 

Jillian knew she could run and he wouldn’t even miss her.  But her eyes were drawn to her left hand which was still holding the filthy Floppy that Brittany had entrusted to her.

Before she knew what she was doing, Jillian picked up a large tree branch and swiftly knocked him to the ground from the shock of the blow.  She continued to let the stick rise and fall, until his body went limp. 

When she was finished, she picked up Brittany who was sitting up wide eyed. 

“Come on, sweetie.  Let’s go home.”

Jillian remembered the week that followed.  She recalled her son’s relentless questions of who this new sister was and where she came from.  She avoided the questions and eventually they stopped , giving way to childish acceptance that came with the close bond that they formed.  When she moved to a new town, everyone assumed they were twins and she told no one any differently.  When she met her second husband, he made the same assumption and she never corrected him.

Jillian lifted her head and faced the past.  “No regrets.  I wouldn’t change a thing.”