The last time I saw my first love was on my 17th birthday—thirty years later, a woman who looked exactly like her stepped into my yard

Shawn… she probably should have.”

Silence settled between us.

“She was seventeen,” he said finally. “She thought she was protecting you.”

“And the river?”

Thomas closed his eyes at the question.

“The river gave her a way out.”

I sat in Thomas’s kitchen with my hands flat on the table.

I didn’t feel relieved. I didn’t feel grateful. I felt something I didn’t continue reading …