Because guilt works best when it borrows the face of someone innocent.
I closed the email and did not reply.
Two days after that, Pastor Evans called.
His voice was kind and hesitant in the way pastors’ voices often are when they know they are stepping into a family dispute and do not want blood on their shoes.
“Helen,” he said gently, “I’m not sure what’s going on. Daniel came by. He seemed concerned. He said you’ve been making rash decisions. Forgetting details.”
There it was.
The campaign.
Not legal yet. Social first. Quiet. Respectable. Sprinkle concern in all the right places so that if I ever spoke publicly, I would sound like exactly what they had already described: elderly, confused, overreacting.
I sat at the kitchen table and looked out at the magnolia tree while he spoke.
“Thank you, Pastor,” I said when he finished. “Please tell my son I remember more than he wants me to.”
