‘I hope your birthday makes you smile because Dad says you didn’t smile enough when he was little.’
I looked away.
My mother began crying.
“Was I really that bad?”
For one moment, habit nearly made me lie.
Then I stopped.
“Yes.”
She nodded slowly.
“I don’t know how to fix what I did.”
“You can’t.”
“Ethan—”
“You don’t fix decades.”
I looked at her.
“You live with what you did and decide whether you become different.”
She cried harder.
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Claire.”
My stomach tightened.
“When she came back…”
Eleanor stared at the card.
“…I was afraid you would love her more.”
“She was dying.”
“I know.”
“You had me for every day afterward.”
“I know.”
“And you still competed with a ghost.”
My mother pressed Noah’s card against her chest.
“I’m sorry.”
Years ago, those words would have opened every locked door inside me.
Now—
they were simply words.
Late.
Real perhaps.
But late.
“I believe you.”
Hope appeared in her face.
Then I said:
“But forgiveness doesn’t automatically mean access.”
The hope disappeared.
I almost reached for her.
Then I remembered Noah lowering his hand.
Marissa asking if she was family.
Claire’s voice telling a newborn:
You are enough.
“I will not teach my children that loving somebody means enduring cruelty because you share blood or a surname.”
Eleanor nodded.
“Can I see them someday?”
I looked back through the window.
Sophie.
Marissa.
Noah.
My family.
“Someday isn’t today.”
She accepted it.
For once—
she gave me something without demanding something in return.
