It's 5:20 a.m. and I still have not gone to sleep. This story has been wriggling around my brain and tonight it just had to come out. I'm not doing much editing... I admit... because I might loose my courage to post this otherwise. It's a oneshot. Don't expect more. Please R&R.

Josh - I don't own it.

Kirsten stood in front of the full length mirror, holding her hands against her flat stomach, remembering what it was like to have a life growing inside of her and then not having one at all. It was her secret. One she had successfully kept from Sandy all these years. Unlike the time she had conveniently forgotten that she had loaned Jimmie Cooper one hundred thousand dollars or that Jimmie had kissed her, Kirsten knew that Sandy would not be able to forgive this secret.

"Do you know what Ryan is going through?"

"Not as well as I know what she's going through."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing."

It was the closest she had ever come to revealing her secret to her husband. All these years, she had kept it to herself, but now she wondered if it was time to let her husband know.

"You talked her into having this child!"

Maybe Sandy would understand, thought Kirsten. He would understand that she hadn't been ready to have a baby. It hadn't been the right time.

"Are you okay?" Sandy stood behind her and put his hand on her shoulders. "You've been standing there an awfully long time."

She forced a weak smile. "I was just thinking."

"It's been a rough month," Sandy agreed.

He assumed she was thinking about how Ryan left for Chino and Seth had run away. It had been easy enough to track Seth down and to force him to come back, while bringing Ryan home had been entirely more difficult. It was Theresa who had finally made the decision for him by moving to Atlanta to live with her cousin in and promising Ryan a paternity test when the baby was born. So Ryan moved back to Newport. Seth was home. Their family was complete, yet there was a gaping hole in the heart of it.

"Honey." Sandy used his softest most reassuring voice. The one he used when he broached a topic he knew would anger her. "This has been so difficult for us. Maybe we should consider some family counseling."

Kirsten whirled around. Sandy hated shrinks. He thought they were all quacks. He must be really worried, she thought, if he was suggesting therapy.

"We're okay," she said, but her voice was shaky.

Kirsten crossed the room and rummaged through her jewelry box. She found the earrings she was looking for. The ones Sandy had given her on their first anniversary and put them on. He had spent way too much money on them. At the time she had known they couldn't afford it, but it made him so happy to give them to her, she didn't say anything to ruin the moment. They were living in the back of a mail truck. Sandy had six months left of law school. She was finishing her art history degree. They didn't have a penny to their names, because Sandy refused to live off of her father's money.

A lot of people thought that Caleb had cut her off because he disapproved of the marriage. Sandy was Jewish after all. He was a lawyer and their politics always clashed. But Caleb didn't want his daughter living like a pauper. It was pride, hers and Sandy's that kept them from accepting any support.

Sandy sat on the bench at the end of their bed. "Things were different back then. Simpler."

"We thought they were simpler," she said.

"Weren't they?"

Kirsten shook her head. She sat down beside him and put her head on his shoulder, fighting back the tears that were welling up in the corner of her eyes.

"We made choices back then. Difficult terrible choices."

She couldn't afford a private doctor. They didn't have health insurance so she went to the free clinic on campus where the doctor confirmed that she was pregnant. He must have seen the look of horror on her face, because he gently told her she had options. The blood drained from her cheeks. Options? What options did she have? She had no money. She was still in school. Her husband was still in school. They lived in the back of a goddamned mail truck, living on love, pride and ideals like a sixties flower children. They weren't ready to be responsible for another life.

"Honey?" Sandy lifted her chin with his index finger. "Won't you talk to me? Tell me about it? What's on your mind?" He looked down at his feet. It reminded Kirsten of Ryan. "I thought it would be better when the boys came home. But you're not better."

The doctor told Kirsten about her options. She could have the baby. She could carry it to term and give it up for adoption. Or she could have an abortion. The doctor gently asked about the father. Would he want this child? Could he help her? He assumed because she was so young and so afraid and looked so alone that she was single. He never thought to ask if she was married.

"We should go down to the kitchen," Kirsten said. "The boys will be up. It's their first day of school."

Sandy followed her down the stairs, his shoulders sagging, wishing he could add the obvious weight his wife carried, so her burden would be less. He watched Kirsten put a smile on her face and set out two glasses of orange juice for each of the boys. She lightly slapped Ryan's hand as he reached into the cereal box and pointed to the cabinet where they kept the bowls. Her boys made her happy.

The walls of the free clinic were painted a drab shade of green that depressed Kirsten. There was no joy in the building. And while the examining rooms were clean and sterile, the equipment and furniture showed its age and severe under funding. The waiting room was unkempt, ripped magazines were scattered among the chipped tables and tattered chairs. She would do what she had to do, but she wouldn't do it here.

Seth was prattling on about how this year would be different. "This year litmag will publish my limericks. And what about you Ryan, are you going to go out for soccer again?"

Ryan shrugged. "I guess." Seth's enthusiasm had not rubbed off on him.

She had to ask her mother for the money. Kirsten endured an afternoon of tea and scones, her mother's adopted tradition, with a healthy dose of small talk. Hailey, awkward with braces and the emerging signs of puberty, came to say hello and then quickly retreated to her room. Kirsten didn't tell her what the money was for, but made some vague insinuations that they were in debt and desperately needed to climb out of it before things got out of hand. But Christina Nichol held her hands in hers and stared into her eyes and said, "You're pregnant. Aren't you?"

She had cried then. In her mother's arms. The first tears she had shed since the doctor had told her the news. She couldn't help but think that most married women would be shedding tears of joy yet hers were of desperation. "I can't have this baby," she insisted. "I'm not ready."

Her mother pursed her lips and said nothing. Kirsten could feel the disapproval burning a whole into her back as her mother primly walked to the safe and pulled out a wad of cash. "You'll let me know if you need more." But Kirsten knew she wouldn't. She didn't know if she could ever face her mother again.

Kirsten handed the keys to the Range Rover to Seth. "Bring it home in one piece," she instructed. "Consider this a test. To see if the two of you can handle the responsibility of owning and sharing a car." She didn't miss the gleeful look that passed between Seth and Ryan as they mulled over the prospect of finally having their own set of wheels. A car for each of them would make them less of an outcast, but one car for the two of them was still better than a bike and a skateboard.

"Have a good day." Sandy waved at them from the open front door. Kirsten stood in front of him, just a few inches out of his reach. Now that the boys were out of their sights, she didn't need to pretend to be happy.

The doctor's office was clean but cold and sterile. The nurses were all business, not interested in what procedure she was there to do. The doctor entered the examining room, said a gruff hello and the bent his head to study her chart. He double checked that she had been through all the appropriate counseling sessions, that she wasn't too far along and asked her one last time, "are you sure you want to do this?" But the question was by rote, devoid of any feeling.

He followed her back inside of the house. "Kirsten, we're not going anywhere today until you tell me what's wrong. Whatever it is, it's eating inside of you. Please honey, share whatever this is with me."

"You don't want to know." Her voice was sharp, like the pointy end of a knife.

"I do."

He held out his arms and she fell into them. His chin rested on top of her head. He could feel her body shake with silent tears and Sandy wrapped his arms tightly around her back, hoping to stop the trembling. He felt the wet tears soak through his shirt.

"You can tell me anything. Our love is so strong it can bear the weight of the world."

She lay back on the examining table, the paper crumpling when she shifted into a comfortable position and stared at the ceiling as the nurse helped put her feet into the uncomfortable stirrups. Her legs were spread far apart and she arched her back as she felt the doctor reach inside of her with his cold instruments. The tears fell, silently rolling down her cheeks, and to the vinyl table beneath her. They silently fell as she ended the life inside of her.

"You'll hate me," she cried.

"I could never."

And the damn broke as the years of carrying this secret bore down on her. She couldn't carry it alone. Not anymore. Not after everything had happened.

"Seth could have had an older brother or sister." She looked at the wall as she said this, hoping Sandy would think she was looking in his eyes, a trick she had learned from Seth and Ryan as they avoided telling her the truth.

Sandy's grip on her shoulders tightened as he quizzically looked into her eyes.

"I was scared Sandy. I wasn't ready. We weren't ready and so I ended the pregnancy."

He took a step back, bumping into the wall, looking like a rabbit caught in an open field.

"I don't understand."

Kirsten told him the story. The one she had kept locked inside of her for twenty years.

"You killed our child."

"Oh God Sandy…." His words made her feel dirty. The way she had felt when visiting Ryan in Juvie. "Yes," she admitted. "I'm sorry."

"But why?"

She tried to find the words to make him understand, but she knew she would never find them, because Kirsten couldn't understand it herself. She wished she could turn back the clock and do it all over again. She wished she had sat Sandy down and told him the news and allowed him to allay her fears, instead of listening to some doctor recite her options.