Chapter 25 - HOLLIS GETS OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND
Hollis was sixty-two when he asked me for coffee.
Fletcher was thirty.
No legal dispute.
No custody.
No money.
Just coffee.
I went.
He looked older.
Still handsome.
Different kind.
“I think I finally understand what I did at the dinner,” he said.
“You’ve understood for years.”
“No. I understood facts.”
I waited.
He continued.
“When I said ‘give Mom what she wants and this stops,’ I made her violence your responsibility.”
Yes.
“I told our son safety depended on whether you complied.”
Yes.
“And I thought because I wasn’t the one grabbing him, I was separate.”
I said nothing.
He looked at me.
“I wasn’t.”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Thank you for not teaching Fletcher to hate me.”
“I didn’t teach him how to feel about you.”
“Exactly.”
That was the point.
Fletcher built his own relationship with his father.
Not mine.
Hollis asked:
“Do you regret marrying me?”
I thought.
“No.”
He looked surprised.
“Why?”
“Because regretting the marriage would turn Fletcher into evidence of a mistake. You loved me. I loved you. Then you failed us in a way our marriage could not survive. All true.”
Hollis cried.
I did not.
We finished coffee.
May you like
Then returned to our separate lives.
Closure can be ordinary.
