“That was 2009,” she said, barely holding it together, and my urge to pull her close was crazy strong. “They discovered this exactly four years ago.”

I felt the punch in my gut. That was when we last saw each other. When Finn was born. When he lived and died in his little plastic bed. I could hear the beeps of the monitor again, a steady stream of his heartbeat and random alarms. The only thing worse than those sounds was when they stopped.

“That’s a powerful coincidence, finding that third star right then,” I finally said.

Corabelle turned on her side, watching me. “When he said it in class, I could barely breathe. And you sat there, all defiant in your chair, just as stiff and angry as you got at the end.”

I’d been angry. I knew that. The doctors had no more told us Finn would die than everyone was looking to me to make the decisions. To be strong for the whole lot of them, as if this wasn’t as hard for me. Just thinking about that day made the rage boil over and before I could think about what I was saying, I blurted out, “You made me sign the papers to turn off the machines.”

Corabelle sat up. “What are you talking about?”

I should shut this down, but I’d started it. I had to finish it. “The damn forms. The ones allowing them to shut down his ventilator.” Bitterness coursed through me. I hadn’t thought about this in years, but she was making me. She was dredging it all up.

Corabelle tried to touch me, but I jerked away.

“Is that why you left?” she asked. “Because you had to sign?”

I couldn’t breathe, much less answer. Everything was rushing at me, like it had in those final days.

Corabelle dropped her hands in her lap. “We did what the doctors told us to do.”

I couldn’t take this anymore. I sat up and snatched at my bag. “I signed the paper. I decided when it ended. I was the one who told them when to let him die.” I kicked at the fluttering page of the lab assignment and stepped on the stick as I strode away. This wasn’t going to work. Too much history. Too much misery. Too much everything.

I shoved through the door and hauled ass down the stairs. Only when I was on my motorcycle, the roar of the motor drowning out all sound, did I start to feel any better. Distance. I needed miles to separate me and Corabelle again. Nobody could go through all this and come out okay. No one could be tough enough. I sure as hell wasn’t.

The lights of the city began to fade as I tore through Torrey Pines State Park and to the ocean. Just the quiet there, and the lack of strip malls and concrete, calmed my fury. I hated blowing up at Corabelle for something that wasn’t her fault. If she’d signed the papers, nothing would have been any different. The nurse would still have come in, and Corabelle would still have sat in that chair to hold the baby her first and last time. They would still have removed the ventilator. And the whir of the machines and the beeps of the monitors would still have gone silent.

Finn would still have died.

I turned off where the highway made contact with the beach and killed the bike. The water crashed against the shore, its endless wake a lulling sound, like the white-noise monitor some friend had given us for the baby. When Corabelle was still pregnant and couldn’t sleep, I played it for her at night. We laughed that since we couldn’t go to the college by the sea, we’d bring the sea to us.

Everything was flooding back, a trove of memories deeper than the ocean in front of me. I couldn’t handle it any more than I had back then. I’d run again and ditched Corabelle a second time.

I yanked my helmet off and ripped the gloves from my hands. What was I doing? Where was I going? I wanted to hurl something at the moon, all serene in the stars. My classmates were on the building still, doing their lab work, and now I was going to start with an incomplete on the first assignment. Hell, maybe college was a waste. I had experience at Bud’s. If he wouldn’t promote me out of the oil changes and tire repair, I could find a place that would. My family boasted a long line of blue-collar workers. I didn’t have to be any better.

I couldn’t run from the stars, the whole ceiling winking at me like a mockery of my time on the roof with Corabelle. There didn’t seem to be any place where I could escape. 

The sugar jars clanged together as I shoved them all in a bin to be filled. Whoever closed the night before was officially on my bad side. Prepping the coffee stand for the next day was the job of the evening crew.

I opened on Thursday mornings, a crazy early shift that started at 5 a.m. The shop would open in half an hour and Jason and I were manic, grinding beans and starting all the coffees, filling the bagel bin and bringing in the pastries from the dawn delivery.

But the work was brainless, so I could think through all the events of the night before. After Gavin stormed out, I caught the page of his lab work, filled out mine, adjusted for his, and turned them both in. I didn’t really want to help him, and even as I did it, I burned with anger that he let something as small as a signature ruin everything. If he hadn’t left me then, I would have been okay. No blackouts, no arrest, no leaving my old college.

Sugar slid over my hands as I overfilled a jar. “Shit!” I said, pulling back on the jug.

Jason paused as he walked by with a tray of biscotti. “Frozen Latte knows curse words?” He shook his dreadlocks. “The world is upside down.”

I flicked sugar at him. This seemed so unbelievably simple. I’d spent half the night trying to remember that day, the parts I could bear. I really had no recollection of the conversation about the paperwork. We sat in some little conference room, and they’d gone over the results of Finn’s heart test, and his brain scans, and how there was no longer any hope and the surgeon would not operate.

I closed my eyes for a moment. The room was so clear, the gray walls, black chairs, fake wood table. The doctor’s beeper had gone off incessantly, but he ignored it, at least.

Finn was already lost. They hadn’t saved him. His heart defect would not be repaired, and the lack of oxygen had already taken its toll. He would die, now or later, and we should prevent him from suffering.

I couldn’t remember where I had been when the papers were signed, only that it was prom night, and people who had no idea what was happening were sending me texts asking if we would get away for the night, if I had a dress to wear. Facebook was blowing up with pictures of corsages and hairdos and limousines.

The shadows of a couple customers darkened the windowed door. I had to move, stop thinking, and work. I wiped down the sugar jars and set them out on the coffee bar. Jason came toward me, lugging the first two coffee tureens of the day. “You can let them in,” he said. “We’re set up.”

I crossed the shop and twisted the lock on the door. Several early regulars in suits and work clothes hustled in. Jason waited behind the counter, and I rounded the pastry display to man the machines. I already knew what several orders would be.

In New Mexico, I had a cushy job working in the dean’s office, filing and answering phones. Sometimes here in San Diego, early in the morning, during the rush, when customers were late to work and we couldn’t make their coffee fast enough, I wished I had taken the risk to use my experience to get something better. I still could. If I went for an office job outside of the university, probably no one would look very close. And even if they did find out about my altercation on campus, the worst that could happen would be to get fired, and I could try the next place.

But I’d been too rattled when I first arrived. It seemed easier taking a job like this where no one cared about your past or even your present outside of the hours you were in the shop. Show up, do your job, and don’t steal anything. That was about as much as anyone asked. Baristas could be surly and still be considered just to have character. Friendliness didn’t necessarily get better tips, as regulars were set in their ways on ordering and dropping in change or adding to it. It was easy to be unmotivated.