My mom came in at three-thirty and sat on the bed, like the night before.
“I’m so angry, Mom,” I said into the dark. “I’m so angry I can’t breathe.”
“I know.”
“He made me think I was broken. For six years.”
“I know, honey.”
“And when the one thing I ever wanted finally came, he made me think I’d done something terrible. He made Evie into a… into evidence. Into proof that I’m a liar. She was three minutes old.”
My mom didn’t say anything for a while.
“What do you want to do?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know tonight.”
“Do you think I should forgive him?”
My mom sighed. She was quiet for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer.
“I think,” she said finally, “that forgiveness isn’t one thing. It’s not a door you walk through once. It’s more like a road. And you don’t have to decide tonight if you’re going to walk down it. You don’t ever have to walk down it at all, if you don’t want to. That’s your choice. Nobody else’s. Not his. Not mine.”
