Chapter 26 - THE MEETING WITH BRENDA
I was sixty when I finally met Brenda again.
Twenty-eight years after the patio.
Not because enough time had automatically passed.
Because I chose it.
Elise did not attend.
Preston did not attend.
Gary waited nearby.
The meeting occurred in a mediator’s office.
Brenda entered with gray beginning at her temples.
She looked like Mom.
That nearly ended me before we spoke.
“Hi, Audrey.”
“Hi.”
We sat.
No hug.
No cameras.
No family lawyer.
Brenda began:
“I’m sorry.”
I raised a hand.
“I know.”
She stopped.
“I don’t need another version of the apology first.”
“What do you need?”
“I want to know whether you remember my face after you hit me.”
Brenda’s eyes filled immediately.
“Yes.”
“What did it look like?”
“Like you couldn’t understand why I was still angry while you were scared.”
That was close.
“I was waiting for Elise to move.”
“I know.”
“Did you want her dead?”
Brenda did not hide.
“Yes.”
The room became very quiet.
“Do you still hate yourself for that?”
“Sometimes.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She almost smiled because the correction sounded like me.
“I don’t believe hating myself helps you. I try to live in a way that doesn’t repeat the thinking.”
Better.
“Did Dad make you do it?”
“No.”
“Did he make it easier?”
“Yes.”
“Did you blame him because prison was easier if he was the mastermind?”
“At first.”
“And now?”
“He designed the plan. I chose what I wanted from it.”
There.
The truth I needed.
Not forgiveness.
Not innocence.
Proportion.
We talked for ninety minutes.
Childhood.
Mom.
Gary.
Robert’s funeral.
Prison.
Elise.
Brenda never asked to meet her.
At the end, she said:
“Do you want to do this again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
We hugged.
Briefly.
My body remembered her shoulder coming toward my stomach.
Then recognized the woman holding me now was sixty.
Both sensations existed.
We met twice more before Brenda moved to Maine near a friend.
We never became close sisters.
We stopped being strangers.
That was our form of repair.
When I told Elise, she asked:
“Did you forgive her?”
I laughed.
“You’re still asking that?”
“I’m an engineer. I like binary outcomes.”
“Wrong family.”
She smiled.
“Fair.”
Then she asked the better question.
“Was seeing her good for you?”
May you like
“Yes.”
That was enough.
