That wasn’t a beautiful apology, but it was an honest one.
“You didn’t just move me out of the way,” I said. “You used my daughter too.”
She looked down. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Lily asked me that night if she was in trouble.”
Melissa closed her eyes briefly. “Dad told me.”
I crossed my arms, not for effect but to steady myself. “You and Mom have treated me like divorce is contagious. Like I walk into a room and ruin the furniture.”
“That wasn’t—”
“It was exactly that.”
She nodded once, swallowing hard. “Maybe part of me liked being the stable one. The married one. The one Mom could point to.” Her voice dropped. “And when things started falling apart for us, I couldn’t stand the idea that you might see it.”
That, too, was true. Ugly, but true.
We talked for nearly an hour. Not warmly, not neatly. There were pauses and sharp edges and several moments where I considered ending it. She admitted my mother had encouraged the exclusion, saying it would be “cleaner” if I simply thought there had been confusion. Melissa admitted she had written the text about Lily being “too much” after a difficult week and that she had known, even as she typed it, that it was cruel.