Why did I care? Why not allow her to love a monster after all that had transpired? I don’t know. Maybe the closer I got to the source of it all, the more humanity I re-acquired. Maybe I was coming full circle as the waiting came to a close. It seemed to work. Symbolically, at least.

“He would never hurt me.”

“You haven’t learned anything? After all this time you’ve learned nothing?”

“He would never hurt me,” she repeated with a smug smile.

“You’d be surprised at who could hurt you.”

“He would never hurt me…neither would you.”

“I probably wouldn’t. But you can’t know that for sure.”

“You would’ve done it by now. And I did what you wanted. I led you to my sister.”

“You owe me more than that.”

“What do you want, Spencer? A fucking sonnet?”

I was nervous, anxious. Screaming obscenities on the inside, fighting the urge to run to the bathroom and never face her at all. What had I wanted to begin with? Kyla was right. What could be gained now?

My niece.

I was doing it for Maggie.

I slapped Kyla as hard as I could, knowing it was as far as I would ever go. That’s exactly why I needed to do it. To draw my line in the sand and have it visible, as if to say “This is it. This is as far as I can go. This is how much compassion can be spared. On the other side of this line is where I really am. Who I really am.”

I heard her cry out, but I was too busy reveling in the tiny pinpricks I felt on the palm of my hand from where it had met her face to care that I had caused pain. And maybe that sensation alone brought me closer to Ashley. Maybe that was the kind of symbolism that forgiveness was built upon. I could only feel the action. The consequence was drowned out in the noise of pure focus on the task at hand.

Maybe I could never forgive. But maybe I wasn’t so good, so innocent that I couldn’t understand. Sometimes (often) the why’s are more convincing that the how’s.

“I’m sorry,” Kyla said, but it was aggressive and perhaps, too late.