Not a finished one.
Just an adult, finally responsible for becoming someone better.
She stood.
“I should go.”
“Tessa.”
She turned.
“I don’t hate you.”
Her eyes filled.
“I know.”
She nodded.
Then left.
Clare eventually agreed to meet her.
Public place.
Coffee shop.
No Lily.
The conversation lasted forty minutes.
I did not attend.
I did not ask for details.
When Clare returned, she took off her coat and said, “It was okay.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Do I need to hate anyone?”
She laughed.
“No.”
Six months later, Tessa met Lily.
She held her carefully.
Almost awkwardly.
Lily stared at her with enormous suspicious eyes.
Tessa whispered, “You’re probably going to hear some stories about me.”
Clare raised one eyebrow.
Tessa immediately added, “When you’re thirty.”
We laughed.
Not because everything had been erased.
Because it hadn’t.
Forgiveness, I learned, is not amnesia.
