Therapy helped her. It helped me too, though I resisted at first because men my age are trained to treat emotions like private property. But my therapist, an older man with kind eyes, said something that cracked my pride open.
“You trusted,” he said. “That wasn’t weakness. That was love. You’re grieving love that was used against you.”
Naming it as grief made it easier to carry.
Sophie’s relationship with the word “grandma” changed. She stopped using it for Margaret. Not out loud in a dramatic way—just quietly, naturally, as if her brain had decided the title no longer applied.
When Sophie asked about Margaret in prison, Catherine was careful. “She made choices,” Catherine said. “Bad choices. And she’s facing consequences.”
Sophie nodded, then asked, “Do you think she ever loved Grandpa?”
The question hit like a sharp object.
I answered honestly. “I think she loved what I gave her,” I said. “I don’t think she respected me. Love without respect turns into something ugly.”
Sophie considered that. “Then I’m going to love people who respect me,” she declared.
I smiled. “That’s a good rule.”