If she wanted never to see her aunt again for the rest of her life, I would support that just as completely, and never once make her feel that she had failed some test of grace by choosing it.

Her forgiveness was hers alone to give or to keep, on her own timeline, for her own reasons, or for no reason, and no one — not a judge, not a therapist, not her own father, and least of all the woman who wronged her — had any right to it.

What actually happened, in the end, was better than forced forgiveness could ever have been, precisely because no one forced it.

Veronica did the slow, unglamorous work of becoming trustworthy, expecting nothing, and Hannah watched, on her own terms, and reached her own conclusions in her own time. I haven’t forgiven you.