Today we begin a week of fiction. Enjoy a new writer and story each day.

by Paula Hilton

As the jet began its sickening downward spiral, her final thoughts surprised her. She’d assumed the crash position, the flight attendants’ voices a chorus in her ears: Brace! Brace! Heads down! Grab your ankles!

Following their instructions, she caught sight of her feet in flirty summer sandals. Her toes were unpolished.

She was sorry she hadn’t painted them hot pink. Not once, all summer. It had been a rainy season, and she’d been as glum as the unseasonably gray skies. Cheerful toes would have helped. She saw that now.

In fact, there were many things she was sorry about.

She’d never tried that recipe for white chocolate apricot muffins. She was sorry the best friend she wanted to make them for would never taste them. She was sorry she’d never taste them.

She also regretted getting on the plane without planting the pot of black-eyed Susans she’d left behind on the deck. Now they wouldn’t get their chance to come back next summer. But at least they’d get one season, and their death would be slow. Hers was imminent.

She was sorry she was about to die before reading all the Important Books on her list: Jane Eyre, Animal Farm, War and Peace, and so on. Oh, War and Peace! She’d wanted to finish that one and astonish people with her stick-to-it-iveness.

But she wasn’t at all sorry for the summer she’d spent by the pool reading everything in the Jackie Collins canon. Her toes had been pink then. Her tanned skin the color of lightly buttered toast. She remembered feeling cheerful, completely relaxed. She was sorry she never allowed herself to have another summer like it.

She couldn’t believe she’d never know how Game of Thrones ended. Then she wondered why she was musing about a show filled with violent endings. Wasn’t it enough to be experiencing her own?

“Huh,” she said to the jet’s floor. “Huh.”

She was deeply sorry for every time she’d said to her mother, who’d recently turned seventy-five, “You’ve told me that story before, Mom.” She regretted her exasperated tone. Stories retold often reveal something new. She was sorry she hadn’t had the patience to hear the subtle changes.

She was sorry about her perpetually sloppy closet. She hated leaving a mess for her husband to deal with.

Her husband. Her kids. She couldn’t go there. She refused to die crying.

She was sorry she never embraced the woman she’d become and for every moment she wasted trying to look the age she was when she was young and beautiful, but confused.

She was sorry she hadn’t slept more. She’d gone through too much of her adult life drained and exhausted, save for that one, glorious summer.

At that thought, she closed her eyes, and in her last fifty-four seconds, she saw her daughter’s eyes, the dark blue irises wise and penetrating, even at seven years old. She sighed heavily then, knowing these thoughts of her most loved ones had to come. She felt intense regret that she would never have a grown-up relationship with her daughter, who seemed even now to be able to see right through her and call her out on any bullshit. She was a better person because of that small child.

Her daughter gave a slow blink, and the eyes changed into the rich brown ones of her son. They glimmered with mischief and pride, as if he’d just told the best bathroom joke of all-time. He was nine. She was achingly sorry she wouldn’t be around to laugh with him about his adventures. He’d taught her to loosen up, which was no small feat.

Then her son gave her a carefree wave and blinked, and she was staring into the eyes of her husband, hazel, like her own. Her match. Her equal. She’d never been bored. She was filled with gratitude for the fifteen years they’d shared. She was sorry there wouldn’t be more.

Then, the beloved eyes faded, and what came next felt like sleep, but not the kind she’d been longing for.

And she was sorry about that too.