Nate told me he was furious. He told me the fury lasted for approximately two years. During those two years, he did not visit the house. He spoke to his parents by phone only. He maintained the minimum contact required to preserve the relationship without participating in it.
Then he told me he processed it. Not forgave. Processed. The distinction mattered because forgiving required him to accept the decision as understandable, and he never accepted it as understandable. He accepted it as having happened. The having happened was a fact. Facts, unlike forgiveness, do not require emotional acceptance. They require acknowledgment. Nate acknowledged the fact and resumed contact with his parents with the particular, careful, measured distance of a man who has been lied to by the people he trusted most and who has decided that the distance is the consequence and the consequence is permanent.
The distance was the reason I had never visited the house.
