Then she whispered, “Thank you.”
Those two words felt like more than I deserved.
I stood near
the door, not daring to come closer.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She closed her eyes again, and for a moment
I thought she was shutting me out.
But then she said, “For which part?”
It was a fair question.
A devastating one.
I swallowed hard.
“For leaving,” I said. “For not asking better questions before I did. For assuming silence meant there was nothing left. For making grief something we had to survive separately.”
She turned her face slightly toward me.
“And for being angry that I didn’t tell you?”
I took a breath.
“Yes,” I said. “For that too.”
A faint line appeared between her brows.
“I didn’t handle it perfectly either.”
I almost denied it automatically, but she gave me a look that stopped me.
“I’m not saying that to make you feel better,” she said. “I made choices too. I hid things. I decided what you could
