She still loved him, plainly and without shame.

She did not pretend otherwise, and she did not use the leverage of the moment to punish him.

But she refused, absolutely, to let Andrew simply walk back into their lives as though six years had never happened, as though a promise to come back that went unkept for the whole of his son’s life could be dissolved by a single tearful reunion.

Love, Maria understood, was not the same as an open door.