The temptation to blame everything on Wendy was powerful, but the truth was harder. My mother had made an unforgivable choice, yet my own pride had created the opening she used. I had refused to hear Jessi when our marriage was collapsing. I had treated suspicion like proof and silence like strength. If I wanted a place in Leo’s future, I could not begin by pretending I had no responsibility for the past.
That was why, when Jessi and I began talking again, I let her set the pace. Some conversations lasted twenty minutes. Others stretched late into the evening. She told me about Leo’s first day of school, his obsession with rockets, his habit of taking broken toys apart just to understand them, and the way he always asked too many questions before bed. I listened without trying to turn every story into another reason to hate the years I had lost.
