“You need to understand why.”
“I let Carla decide everything.”
“That explains part of it.”
“It doesn’t excuse me.”
“No.”
“At first it was little things. Restaurants. Clothes. Who we invited. Then I stopped questioning anything because it was easier.”
“And eventually I disappeared.”
“Yes.”
His voice broke.
“Don’t turn this into a war against your wife.”
“She did terrible things.”
“So did you.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
“Blaming Carla completely would just be another way of avoiding your own decisions.”
“I know.”
For a while, we listened to the water.
Then he said, “When I saw the house, my first thought was how much you could have done for us.”
I turned toward him.
His face reddened with shame.
“And then I realized what I was thinking.”
“I was still looking at your money before I was looking at you.”
“Yes.”
“I had a whole mother in front of me for years, and I reduced you to that apartment. Grocery sales. Your old purse. Waiting for our calls.”
I looked at my coffee.
“Sometimes I did wait for your calls.”
His eyes filled.
“That hurts more than the fifty million.”
“It should.”
“I need it to.”
After a moment he asked, “Is there any chance you’ll forgive me?”
“Forgiveness isn’t a prize you get because you cried for two days.”
“What do I do?”
“The right thing.”
“Even if you don’t forgive me?”
