But she also felt, and this surprised her—or perhaps it did not; perhaps her mother had made sure of it—something else. Something that was not yet forgiveness, because forgiveness was not a thing that appeared all at once like a light switched on. It was something slower. Something that had to be grown.
But it was the beginning of it.
The very small, fragile first beginning.
She took a breath.
“I am not going to walk out tonight,” she said.
He looked up.
“I’m not ready to forgive you,” she said. “Honestly. I don’t know when I will be or even if. I don’t know.”
She looked at her hands for a moment, then back at him.
“But I have spent my whole life not knowing who you were, carrying a question with no answer. And now I have an answer.” She paused. “Even if the answer is hard, even if it hurts, I would rather have it than not.”
He nodded very slowly.
“Then what would you like to do?” he asked. And he meant it. He asked it with genuine openness, no agenda behind it. He was leaving it entirely to her. “What do you need from me?”
Rebecca thought about it.