Lotte was in the break room when it arrived, filling a mug with hot water that had been sitting in the kettle too long. She had been warned. Everyone knew approximately when, the same way you know approximately when your period will come, with a window of a few days on either side. Her window had been November. It was the third week.
The regret arrived the way water reaches the bottom of a long drop: not suddenly but conclusively. She set the mug down on the counter. The kettle hissed steam. Someone had left a birthday card on the table, unsigned. She read everyone's names without meaning to.
She had known the decision would cost her something when she made it. That much she remembered clearly. She had been twenty-four and exhausted, working double shifts at the clinic, and Margot had called four times in one week about the thing with their mother, and Lotte had thought: tomorrow. She had known it was not a good choice even as she made it. What she had not known was that she would feel the weight of it later rather than then, and that the weight would be this specific.
The specific weight was not guilt. It was closer to a very detailed understanding of what she had chosen when she chose convenience over presence, what that choosing had meant to Margot, and what Margot had done with the absence instead. She understood this the way you understand a proof: completely and all at once.
She went back to her desk. Her colleague Petrin was on a call about Q4 projections. The window was smudged with handprints from the last windstorm. Her inbox had thirty-seven messages. She answered fourteen of them.
At lunch she sat in the stairwell and ate the sandwich she'd packed. It tasted like the day she'd packed it.
She cancelled her last appointment and said she'd need to reschedule. The woman on the other end asked no questions. Lotte thanked her twice.
She drove home in the usual traffic. The apartment had the smell of clothes left in the dryer too long. She opened the window. Outside, someone was walking a dog that stopped to examine every crack in the pavement with the patience of a specialist.
She sat at the table and put her phone face-up in front of her.
Margot's number was still there. They spoke at Christmas and sometimes in spring, brief efficient calls about practical things. Margot had managed what she'd needed to manage. She had not waited for Lotte to be ready.
Lotte did not call. The regret had arrived. The call now would be a different thing, the kind she and Margot had built after the fact, workable and slightly formal. She could make that call on any day. She had. She would.
The dog outside finished with the crack and moved on.