He looked down.
“And I let you.”
His face crumpled.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I believe you.”
He lifted his eyes hopefully.
“But believing you’re sorry isn’t the same as trusting you again.”
He nodded.
For once, he didn’t ask me to make the moment less painful.
He picked up his suitcase and left.
I stood in the doorway until his car disappeared around the corner.
Then I went inside and closed the door gently.
That evening, the silence of the house frightened me.
I had spent months dreaming of having my home back, yet when I finally stood alone in the kitchen, I found myself staring at the empty chairs.
The oak table still bore a faint scratch from Vanessa’s shattered glass.
I ran my fingers across it.
Peter had built that table thirty-two years earlier.
It had survived birthday cakes, spilled juice, school projects, Christmas dinners, arguments, reconciliations, and one particularly disastrous Thanksgiving when the oven stopped working.
Now it had survived this.
I sat down and cried.
Not because I regretted protecting myself.
But because I had wanted so desperately for my son to be a different man on the night I needed him most.
My neighbor Ruth came over the following afternoon.
She had lived next door for twenty-six years and had known Peter almost as well as I had.
She brought chicken soup, fresh bread, and absolutely no advice.
We sat together at the table.
After a while, she reached across and squeezed my hand.
“You know what Peter would have said?”
I shook my head.
Ruth smiled sadly.
