Her face lifted with hope.

“But forgiving you doesn’t mean letting you back into my life.

There are burdens I’m putting down for good, and I won’t pick that disrespect back up.” I walked away from her without a trace of anger in my chest — and it was the absence of anger, more than anything else, that told me I had truly healed.

I want to be careful about what I mean by that, though, because the word forgiveness gets used in ways that do real harm, and I did not forgive Gemma in the way people often mean it.

I did not decide that what she did was acceptable, or minor, or understandable-in-context, or in any way all right.