“Maybe I am,” she said. “Maybe I’m still her. But she survived you.”
Darnell’s eyes filled with something desperate.
“Lenora, I can change.”
She almost closed her eyes.
There it was.
The sentence every wounded heart waits for and fears.
“You could have changed when I begged you to stop calling me stupid,” she said. “You could have changed when your mother threw away my grandmother’s things. You could have changed when I lost my job and cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. You could have changed before you touched me in anger.”
He whispered, “I didn’t know you were important.”
The cruelty of his honesty hung between them.
Lenora picked up her suitcase.
“I was important.”
Mr. Wilson took the suitcase from her gently and stepped aside.
Darnell did not move until she reached the door. Then he said her name once, very quietly.
