Then he said, “Sometimes I still get angry.”
“You probably always will, a little.”
“Is that bad?”
“No. It means it mattered.”
He nodded.
“Sometimes Emma reaches for Rachel and it stings.”
“I know.”
“Then Emma reaches for me five minutes later, and I feel stupid for being scared.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I know.”
He looked at me.
“I think I thought forgiveness would feel clean.”
I laughed softly.
“No. Forgiveness is usually sticky. Like birthday cake on a doorknob.”
He smiled.
“That’s disgusting.”
“That’s life.”
He looked back at the yard.
“Martha?”
“Yes?”
“That night at the laundromat…”
I turned toward him.
He rarely spoke of it now.
Not directly.
“If you had called,” he said, “I don’t think I would’ve survived losing her.”
My heart clenched.
“I know.”
“I used to think about that a lot.”
“I did too.”
“Do you still?”
I watched a moth circle the porch light.
“Yes,” I said. “But not the same way.”
“How?”
“At first, I thought about it with shame. Now I think about it as a warning.”
He nodded slowly.
“A warning?”
“That one frightened moment can make you forget someone’s humanity. And one merciful moment can give it back.”
Jackson sat with that.
Then he reached over and took my hand.
“You gave me more than babysitting,” he said.
I looked at our joined hands.
His tattooed fingers.
My wrinkled ones.
“You gave me more than noise in my house.”
