Boundaries did not stop the fallout. My parents’ attorney sent a letter requesting a meeting to “discuss reconciliation and financial arrangements.” Richard’s response was one page long and perfect: “Ms. Wilson is not a party to your client’s financial needs.”
Mom tried a different tack—cards in the mail, each with a different apology written in increasingly careful script. The last one included a photo of me at six, missing my two front teeth, holding a papier-mâché turkey. “We were proud of you,” she wrote. “We didn’t know how to show it.” I slid the photo into a drawer and left the card on the counter until the ink blurred under a sweating glass of iced tea.
On a bright Saturday, Elizabeth and I took the train out to Rockport and wandered the harbor, eating fried clams from paper boats and watching gulls argue over the scraps. She told me about the years after she left James’s father—how she built a life in small, careful pieces. “There was a time,” she said, “when I thought grief had eaten the part of me that could be happy. I was wrong.”
“How did you know?”
“I caught myself humming in the produce aisle,” she said wryly. “You don’t hum when you’re carrying rubble.”