A/N: This chapter is a continuation of the last chapter.

When they entered the recovery room, Jamie saw that Alexis looked tired and pale, and that she'd been crying. Connor embraced her. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I guess so." Her voice was barely a whisper.

"What was it like?" asked Taylor.

"They did an ultrasound, and then they gave me some stuff to make me really sleepy," Alexis told her. "After a long time, they told me to get undressed and lie on the table, just like when you get an exam down there. They stuck some stuff up inside me, and then I got this really bad cramp, kind of like when you get your period except a lot worse. Then they told me it was over and to just lie here and rest awhile."

"How do you feel?" asked Jamie.

"OK, I guess. Just a little sleepy."

"What I mean is, do you feel sad?"

"No, not really. I'm just glad to finally have it over with."

"How did you feel after you saw the ultrasound?"

"I didn't look."

Taylor elbowed Jamie hard in the ribs. "Stop asking all those questions!" she hissed fiercely.

As soon as Alexis was able to stand and walk without feeling dizzy, Connor drove Jamie and Taylor back to school and Alexis to his apartment to rest.

"She's having a hard enough time of it without you trying to send her on a guilt trip," Taylor said to Jamie as they entered the school. "You're almost as bad as those people standing outside with the gruesome pictures!"

"I was only trying to help," Jamie replied.

"Help, my ass! You're just trying to force your own beliefs onto everyone else!"

"I am not!" Jamie felt a huge lump in her throat and knew that if she said one more word, she'd start bawling.

She went through the rest of the day in a daze, hardly saying a word to anyone. At home she went straight to her room and logged onto her computer, emerging only for dinner, where she sat picking at her food.

"Out with it," Jo said to her daughter.

Jamie only shook her head.

"You may as well tell me. I'll find out anyway. I know you too well."

"Someone died this morning." Jamie stood and walked back to her room as Jo and Doug just stared at one another, puzzled.

"Bless me , Father, for I have sinned." Jamie's eyes were on her hands, which writhed as if they had a mind of their own. All was silent as Father Hanadarko waited for her to continue. "I - I - " She burst into tears and couldn't finish. Fleeing the confessional, she ran right smack into someone.

"Whoa there!" She recognized Earl's gruff voice and looked up into his kind eyes. "Where ya goin' in such a hurry?"

"I helped a friend do a terrible thing," Jamie told him. "I helped - I helped her kill her baby."

Rather than reacting with shock as she'd expected, Earl only frowned. "How on earth did you do that?"

"Well, I didn't help with the procedure, of course, but I went to the clinic with her, and I didn't try very hard to talk her out of it, so that's just about as bad, isn't it?"

"If she was already on her way to the clinic, it sounds like her mind was already made. It wasn't your job to 'try to talk her out of it.' It was your job to be there for her, to support her. I know you did that, and I'm proud of you."

"But what she did was wrong! It was a sin!"

Earl put his arm around her and led her to a bench underneath a tree. The wind ruffled their hair, and fallen leaves in multiple colors crunched beneath their feet as they walked.

"It's not up to you to right all the wrongs in the world, Jamie," said Earl. "That's much too big a job for any one person. Everyone has their own value system, and just because someone else's is different from yours doesn't necessarily mean yours is right and theirs is wrong, or vice versa."

"Regina from church saw me go in the clinic with Taylor and Alexis. She was with the group holding signs outside. We used to be friends, but I guess she's gonna hate me from now on."

"Well, now, that's for Regina to worry about, isn't it? If she can't be friends with someone who has a different viewpoint from her own, it's her own loss."

"But I do have the same viewpoint as her! I mean, I did..."

"Sometimes people's viewpoints change because of different things they go through in life, and that's perfectly all right. It's nothing to feel guilty about."

"Earl - is Alexis's baby in heaven now?"

"What do you think?"

"Well, obviously it wasn't baptized and christened, but that wasn't its fault!"

Earl patted her shoulder. "There's no reason to worry about that, Jamie. Alexis's baby is safe in the arms of God, but you do need to tell your mother about this. She's been worried to death about you. Ever since that morning you asked her all those questions about when she got pregnant with Bethany, she's been wondering if you were pregnant."

"Oh my God, I had no idea!"

"I know you didn't, but you should speak to her as soon as possible, so she'll know you're all right."

"Oh, I will! Thanks, Earl!"

"Any time, sweetheart." He smiled as he watched her walk away.