All eight had been opened.
She looked up when I stepped outside.
“I read them,” she said.
I sat beside her.
The swing creaked beneath us.
“For years, I told myself not reading them made it less real.” She ran her thumb along the edge of the first page. “But it was real. Every word was real.”
I looked out at the street.
Children rode bikes past the house. A dog barked somewhere. The maple leaves shifted in the breeze.
“I used to imagine you reading them,” I said. “I imagined you crying and calling me. I imagined Dad driving through the night to find me.”
My mother closed her eyes.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I know.”
She turned toward me, almost afraid.
“Does that mean—”
“It means I know you’re sorry,” I said gently. “Forgiveness is going to take longer.”
She nodded quickly, accepting the boundary like a gift she
