A Thousand Regrets Too Late

There's a thread blowing up on Reddit right now.

[What's the most perfect line in all of literature?]

Scrolling through the thousands of replies, I saw a profile picture I knew. A sunflower.

[Probably the hedgehog's dilemma. Get close enough to stay warm and the quills get you. Stay far enough to be safe and you freeze.]

[Nothing describes how I feel about my wife better than that.]

[I love her so much. And she is wearing me down to nothing. I think I'm losing my mind.]

[Three years ago she was diagnosed with severe depression. She has threatened to end her life more than once. I take care of her every minute I can. I check my phone for her messages all day long. And I'm trying to keep a company from collapsing while my board counts every hour I'm not in the room. I am so tired.]

People rushed to comfort him.

[Caring for someone with severe depression is brutal. Of course you're hurting. That's normal.]

[My sister has it. My whole family got ground down by it. I get you, OP.]

He wrote back almost immediately.

[I'm sitting in the parking garage under our building right now. I'm not ready to go up. Just thinking about walking into that apartment, where nobody dares to breathe too loud, and I can't breathe.]

I looked at the steel bars bolted across our window. And I thought of a different line.

[Under the same glass bell jar. The whole world was right outside the window. And on the table in front of me, only death.]

There was nothing I could do.

The sunflower in his profile picture was sitting on our coffee table right now, its petals starting to curl, its head hanging low.

Adrian had brought it home three days ago.

The photo was from yesterday. He'd wrapped his arms around me from behind and snapped it with the flowers in front of us, then cropped me out.

I'm the wife he's talking about. The one who's so hard to love.

When I started seeing Dr. Park, I kept staring at the print on her wall. Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Just a couple of looks, nothing more.

Adrian noticed.

From that day on, every third day, he came home with a bunch of sunflowers.

Three years now.

It's strange how that much time could pass. And yet it doesn't feel like three years. The pain is still so sharp it could have happened yesterday.

It was a Saturday when everything fell apart.

We'd only been married a month.

Adrian had come up with the idea one night. "Your parents have never been out of the country," he said. "Their thirty-fifth anniversary is coming up. Let's take them to Italy. Call it a thank-you for raising someone like you."

Adrian lost his parents young. He never had a family of his own. From the day we started dating, he treated mine like they were his.

Dad loved his bourbon, so every time Adrian came over, he showed up with a good bottle and sat on the porch with him until they were both a little too happy.

Mom's lower back was bad. Every other week, Adrian drove down to rub it out for her. She told everyone in town that her son-in-law was sweeter than her own daughter.

When we were dating, he'd given me that same kind of love. Every bit of it.

I thought it was the happiest time of our lives.

We saw so many places on that trip. My parents on one side of me, my husband on the other. All the people I loved most, right there.

I thought it would always be like that.

Then we got to a little hill town. There was an old stone wall covered in ivy, and a line of tourists waiting to take pictures in front of it.

When it was finally our turn, the sun was almost gone. I pushed my parents forward. "Go ahead, you two. There's still some light. We don't get to do this very often."

Mom hooked her arm through Dad's and walked over, smiling a little shyly. "You know, this is the first picture your dad and I have taken together since our wedding photos."

And then the wall came down.

There was no warning. The whole thing just collapsed, stone and vines and dust, all of it at once.

I didn't even have time to scream. My parents were already buried underneath.

I ran at it like a madwoman and clawed at the rubble. My nails split. My fingers were raw and bloody. Adrian was right next to me, digging and shouting for help.

Mom was gone before they got her out. Dad made it to the hospital. He held on for three hours, and then he was gone too.

I sat on the floor in the hospital corridor and stared at my hands. Their blood was still on them.

All I could see was the two of them under that wall.

Adrian pulled me against him. I was shaking so hard I could barely breathe. I pressed my face to his ear and I came apart.

"It was supposed to be me."

"It should have been me."

"No. No, Nor, it's not your fault. It's not."

"Adrian, I did this. I killed them."

"I killed my parents."