Not with demands, and not with excuses — those had all burned away.

He sent his mother a long letter, in his own hand, that said only that he had traded her unconditional love for something cheap and vain, and that he knew it now, and was sorry.

Hazel read it twice.

Then she wrote him back.

She told him that she forgave him, as his mother, fully and without reservation — but that forgiveness was not the same as a return, that he could not simply walk back into a home where he had treated her like a stranger, and that he would need to finish rebuilding his own life, on his own, before there could be any question of stepping back into ours.

She sealed it, and she mailed it, and she did not cry.