Read Online The Remedy for Regret by Susan Meissner - Free Book Online

laundry on her clothesline. I wanted to tell her everything but I was afraid. I just told her I had done something I wish I hadn’t.
    “Well, you know what the remedy for regret is, don’t you?” she said.
    I shook my head. I didn’t.
    “Find a way to make it right,” she replied.
    Her answer left me feeling hopeless and I started to cry in front of her.
    “What if there is no way I can make it right?” I said.
    She must have wondered what it was I had done, but she didn’t ask.
    “Well, can you live with it?” she said instead.
    I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think I could.
    “No,” I whispered.
    She leaned down so that her eyes met my eyes and rested her hands on my shoulders.
    “Then find someone who can make it right,” she said, looking deep into my soul.
    I think even then I knew whom she meant. But that was also a hopeless suggestion. Even God has limitations.
    Give it a rest, for God’s sake. You didn’t kill your mother, Tess.
    Simon’s angry words are repeating themselves in my head as the plane surges forward. I want to believe he is right but that’s not how it feels. Now everything else is suddenly swirling in my head; Simon’s grief and his unrevealed news, the remembered scent of Monica’s baby, memories of the abandoned infant in the peach box, my father’s phone call earlier today, the sound of Corinthia’s voice and lastly the face of the woman in the airport who told me I was the answer to her prayers.
    I feel weighed down. I want to be above it all. I want my own world to be far behind me as I rush to Blair’s side.
    The plane pushes upward against the gravitational pull of the fallen earth, willing itself heavenward, but I can feel the resistance all around me; that force that wants to send me back to the broken world where I belong.

Six
    St Louis, Missouri
    A s I get off the plane at the St. Louis airport, I am only vaguely aware that this place is unfamiliar to me. I have never flown into the St. Louis airport before. The few times I’ve been to this city, I have come by car. Like all major airports I’ve been in, this one is bustling with activity and I am alone in it. There is no one here to greet me, and though this does not surprise me, it doesn’t bother me either. Dad and I traveled so much when I was a child that I grew up accustomed to living out of a suitcase for weeks at a time and being in a strange place where I know no one.
    I make my way to baggage claim, watching all the travelers around me who I can tell have just come home. I can see it in their walk and in their faces. They look relaxed and nearly bored. The thrill of travel is over for them. They are from here. They are home.
    I find it interesting and unsettling that one of the first things people want to know about me when I meet them is where I am from. It shouldn’t be that difficult a question to answer and for most people, it probably isn’t. But like a lot of children of military parents, I struggle with the answer. In the past I’ve been tempted to say that I’m from nowhere. But even in jest, that sounds far too poetic. Or arrogant. Like I believe myself to be above space and time. Like God.
    But the truth is, I don’t feel like I’m from anywhere. I am not from the Azores, though I was born there. I am half-British but I have never been to England. I have lived in Virginia, Maine, Nebraska, Arkansas, Ohio and lately Illinois, but I don’t feel like any one of these places is where I am from . If I were to die today, I suppose my father would bury me next to distant, deceased Longren relatives who lie under the grass in a small cemetery in central Wisconsin near where his parents live. But I’ve never called Wisconsin home. Chicago is beginning to feel like home to me. And since it has always been Simon’s home, I feel a growing attachment. But I doubt I will someday be buried there. I doubt I will ever say it is where I am from.
    The luggage carousel for my flight is empty and unmoving when