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.