I gave a small nod. “Maybe.”
A few months later I was standing in a tiny apartment in Boston with a set of keys in my hand. The place was small and noisy and nothing about it was impressive except that it was mine. I started work the following week at a consulting firm, and for the first time in my life, exhaustion felt like progress instead of survival.
My mother wrote to me first. Three pages full of regret, memory, and the line I read more than once:
I see you now. I just wish I had seen you sooner.
I folded the letter and put it away. I did not answer immediately. Healing would happen on my time.
My father called a few weeks later.
“I was wrong,” he said without preamble. “Not just about the money. About you. About everything.”
I sat on the edge of my bed and listened.
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” he said. “I just needed you to hear that.”
I looked around my apartment at the life I had built piece by piece without their permission or support.
“I hear you,” I said.
