I did not forgive Charlie that day.
Not completely.
Maybe forgiveness isn’t always one clean decision.
Maybe sometimes it arrives in pieces.
But I took the little apartment home.
Ellie placed it on the shelf beside the prom photograph.
A few days later, she stood looking at both.
“Grandma?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think you and David would’ve been happy?”
I looked at eighteen-year-old me.
Then at eighteen-year-old David.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
She frowned.
“But you loved him.”
“I did.”
“Then maybe you would’ve stayed together forever.”
“Maybe.”
I smiled.
“Or maybe we would’ve driven each other crazy after six months.”
Ellie laughed.
Then she became serious again.
“So you’re sad because you don’t know?”
I looked at her.
Exactly.
That was what Charlie had never understood.
He had not stolen some guaranteed perfect life from me.
He had not stolen a marriage I knew would have lasted.
