She wiped her face.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t get eighteen years back.”
“No.”
“You missed his first word.”
She closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“First day of school.”
“Yes.”
“His first school dance.”
Goldi smiled through tears.
“I saw the picture.”
I stared at Mrs. Johnson.
She winced.
“Sorry.”
Against my will, I almost laughed.
Almost.
I looked back at Goldi.
“You hurt us.”
“I know.”
“And believing you left because of Leo hurt him.”
That was the one that broke her.
Goldi sank onto the low stone wall beside the driveway.
“I know.”
She covered her face.
“I thought if Arthur hated me, he would never come looking for me. I never imagined Leo would believe something was wrong with him.”
Leo stepped closer.
Goldi looked up.
“There has never been one day,” she whispered, “not one, when I wished you had been born differently.”
Leo’s chin trembled.
“Then why didn’t you come back after Grandpa died?”
Goldi looked toward me.
“Because by then I wasn’t afraid of my father anymore.”
She paused.
“I was afraid of you.”
Leo frowned.
Goldi touched her chest.
“I had spent fifteen years imagining what I would say. And every year I waited made the next year harder.”
She looked at me.
“And I knew Arthur had built you a good life.”
“That’s not an excuse,” I said.
“No.”
Goldi nodded.
“It isn’t.”
For some reason, that answer mattered.
She wasn’t asking us to rewrite history.
She wasn’t turning abandonment into heroism.
She had tried to protect us.
She had also been wrong.
Both things could be true.
Leo walked to her.
Goldi held her breath.
Then he opened his arms.
She stared at him.
“You can hug me,” he said.
