haven

Chapter 8 - THE LETTER FROM PRISON

Chloe wrote me.

Two years after I came home.

I almost threw the letter away.

Then read it.

She apologized.

Not perfectly.

There were excuses.

Loneliness.

Resentment.

Money.

Daniel.

My absence.

Then one sentence sounded different.

I became someone who believed suffering only mattered when it was mine.

I read it twice.

Maybe prison changed her.

Maybe therapy did.

Maybe she had simply learned better words.

It wasn't my responsibility to decide.

I didn't answer.

But I stopped hating her.

That surprised me.

Hate had become another room in the old house.

I didn't live there anymore.

---

Mom asked:

“Do you forgive her?”

“Some days.”

“That's allowed.”

“You?”

“No.”

I laughed.

“Mom.”

“What? I'm seventy-nine. I don't have time to become spiritually impressive.”

She was eighty by then.

May you like

I reminded her.

She told me to mind my business.

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