Page 50 of The Doctor's Surprise Family

I took a nervous sip. “And us, you and me?”

Claire looked down at the sidewalk, then up at the sky. “Sometimes,” she said. “Why didn’t you…”

“What?”

She let out a sigh. “I guess there’s no point now, rehashing the past. We made the choices we made. No taking them back.”

“I tried to,” I said. “Or at least, I was going to.”

Claire stopped so abruptly her coffee sloshed over. “What do you mean?”

I’d spoken without thinking, caught in the past. Now I cleared my throat. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “No, what did you mean?”

I tried to think how to put it so it wouldn’t sound like I blamed her. I didn’t, at all. She’d protected herself.

“Blake? Answer me. What did you mean?”

“I was going to apply for a change-of-specialty waiver. Switch over from trauma to rehab medicine. I could’ve stayed here that way, but…”

“But what?”

“But you wouldn’t talk to me or answer your phone. Your landlady told me to quit hanging around. I guessed you were done with me, so I went ahead.”

Claire gaped at me, stunned. “You would’ve stayed?” She crumpled her cup. “Then why didn’t you— why didn’t you pull out before? I mean before match day? Or before my birthday? You had a wholemonth, you could have gone for your waiver.”

“I hadn’t thought of it then.” I looked away. “I was still thinking, I don’t know, we’d do long distance. I thought, hey, it’s us. It’s you and me. We’ll work it out somehow.”

“Youliedto me!”

I recoiled from the force of Claire’s sudden shout. “I know,” I said.

“Why would you lie? If you’d only been honest, you might’ve been right. We might’ve talked. Worked something out.”

I swallowed, tongue-tied. Gulped the last of my coffee.

“Didn’t you trust me?”

“What? No! No,yes. I trusted you, yes, but I thought…”

“You thought what?”

I pressed my lips together, trying to marshal my thoughts. “I was scared you’d react just like you did. Scared you’d decide I wasn’t worth it. So I put off telling you, and I put it off, and the more time went by, the more scared I got. I knew you would leave me. I?—”

“You couldn’t know that.” Claire dashed at her eyes. Tears gleamed in the streetlights. She turned away from me, shaking her head. “What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“A good person,” I said. I reached for her arm. She flinched away, so I pulled back. “Good people leave sometimes. They move on, give up. I saw it a lot, you know, growing up.”

Claire stiffened. She made a low sound in her throat.

“Remember I told you about my one foster mom? The one who promised she’d pay for my college?”

“And then she stiffed you, but I’m not like?—”

“She didn’t stiff me,” I said. “Her husband ran off. I’d never have wanted her to break her back paying. But I thought she’d still keep me, still want me at least. But I came home one day and my bags were all packed, and Miss Tina — my caseworker — was sitting out front. Good people give up, Claire. They leave. They move on. Things get hard and the sight of you, they just, they can’t take it. Then, it’s goodbye. It’s nobody’s fault.”

Claire inhaled sharply. She turned back. “Nobody’sfault?You don’t send your kid back.”

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